Coming Soon To A Station Near You: Gas Hits $5 A Gallon In D.C.

Coming very soon to a gas station near you:

Gas Prices Reach Five Dollars a Gallon in the Nation’s Capital
 
Gas prices reach five dollars per gallon at a gas station in Washington, DC on April 19, 2011. Unrest in the Middle East and price speculation have steadily led to higher oil

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

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

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

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

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

Gas prices have DOUBLED since Obama assumed the presidency.

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

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

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

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

Obama Demagoguery Outraging The Citizen Class

A good article on Townhall underscores the building anger that is going to overtake Obama and the Democrat regime in November.

Sunday, May 23, 2010
by Austin Hill: Townhall.com Columnist
Obama Has Enraged the “Citizen Class”

The “citizen class” is horrified.

We’re speaking here of those Americans who, while they may disagree on a variety of social and public policy issues, nonetheless agree on a few, crucial matters.

Those of us among the citizen class generally agree that the United States is a good country. While far from perfect, we see our nation as being a place of tremendous opportunity, and a force for goodness around the world.

We also agree that being a U.S. citizen is a significant and distinct thing. While we respect the notion that all human beings are worthy of their “basic human rights,” we see the rights imparted to citizens of the United States as being something different, something “over and above” the category of “basic human rights.”

This is not to say that we are superior people, because we are U.S. citizens. This is, however, the greatest blessing of being a U.S. citizen. It is why so many of us in the citizen class think of our status as a “naturally born citizen” as being a God-given gift, and we celebrate those who legally earn American citizenship as well.

But along with the distinctiveness of being an American citizen, those of us among the citizen class also regard our nation’s sovereignty as something that must be safeguarded as well. Political philosophies, governmental structures, and economic systems are not morally neutral – some work far better than others. And the structures and institutions and governing philosophies of the United States have produced a far higher level of human flourishing and freedom than any others. For this reason, if for no other, our nation must always be regarded as separate and distinct.

Our nation is good, U.S. citizenship is distinct, and national sovereignty is non-negotiable. In a nutshell, this is the mindset, the worldview, of the citizen class. It has nothing to do with one’s ethnicity, or socioeconomic background, or sexual orientation, or gender. It has everything to do with one’s most deeply held beliefs.

Not every U.S. citizen possesses the “citizen class” view (clearly some Americans don’t understand the blessing of their status), yet a majority of us still do. And no matter how much we may disagree on other matters, those of us in the citizen class won’t budge on these three items.

And this why President Obama has enraged the citizen class. He has planted the seeds of doubt regarding our nation’s goodness, and has implied that U.S. citizenship, and national sovereignty, are irrelevant.

While an overwhelming majority of the citizen class supports Arizona’s effort to uphold the significance of citizenship and sovereignty, President Barack Hussein Obama has sided with the United Nations, Venezuelan Dictator Hugo Chavez, China, and the President of Mexico in opposing the state of Arizona. One would hope that the President of the United States – any President of the United States – would seek to protect all fifty of the states that he governs from international criticism, even if he didn’t happen to like the behavior of one of his states. But our current President stands united with some of the most thuggish regimes in the world, in opposing his fellow Americans of Arizona.

Worse yet, our President not only allowed, but enabled Mexican President Felipe Calderon to publicly humiliate our fellow Americans of Arizona, while standing on the sacred grounds of the White House. And President Obama’s party – the ruling party in Congress – couldn’t rise to their feet quickly enough and offer thunderous applause, when Mr. Calderon publicly humiliated Arizona during an address to both the Senate and House last week.

It’s nothing short of disgraceful to see the President of the United States undermine us, while the entire world is watching. His behavior has, in no small part, called in to question just how “united” the United States of America is right now.

Yet in the midst of the disgrace, there are hopeful signs. The citizen class has whole-heartedly rejected the agenda (such that it is) of Barack Obama. It began last November with statewide elections in New Jersey and Virginia, where gubernatorial candidates endorsed by Barack Obama both lost. It moved on to Massachusetts where Obama’s choice for U.S. Senate lost to Republican Scott Brown.

And now, evidence of the rejection of Obama’s agenda has radiated from Utah, Pennsylvania, and Kentucky. And we haven’t even seen yet how the President’s trashing of Arizona will impact elections yet to occur.

The louder President Obama and his party cheer, the greater the rage of the citizen class. And the citizen class won’t be ignored much longer.

Democrats are claiming that the victory of Democrat Mark Critz over his Republican challenger in a heavily Democrat district, proves that the Democrats are as popular as ever.  Let’s forget the fact that Pennsylvania’s 12 district has been gerrymandered to give Democrats a 2-1 registration advantage over Republicans.  Let’s forget the fact that the special election occurred on the same day as the Democrat primary – whereas Republicans had already voted, and essentially had to vote twice.

Republicans could point out that they just won the election in Barack Obama’s hometown in Hawaii – another state that is heavily Democrat as proof of the fact they they are going to destroy Democrats in November.  But the Republicans only won that because two Democrats were in the race, splitting the Democrat vote.  Sometimes those little details matter.

The fact is that the Democrat victory in Pennsylvania and the Republican victory in Hawaii are for the most part anomalous. Both races will be fought all over again in six months – and the results of both may very likely change.

But the fact is also that the American people have largely turned against Barack Obama.  As of today, he has an approval rating of minus seventeen (- 17), with only 45% of Americans approving of his performance versus 54% who disapprove.  And the fact that a pissed off and frightened people are going to vote in huge majorities against Barack Obama in states and districts across the country in November.

What is particularly interesting is that Mark Critz – and many Democrats – are actively running against Barack Obama and the Obama agenda.  Crizt ran against ObamaCare, and against Obama’s cap-and-trade plan, among other things.  Democrats are literally saying that the American people should elect Democrats in order to oppose the Democrat agenda.  Does that really sound like a narrative that’s going to work in November?

Add to that the fact that unemployment and a host of other measurements of the U.S. economy are bad, with not a whole lot of evidence that they are going to improve.

The Democrats demagogued and demonized Republicans about the Republican record as they assured the American people that they would make everything better.  And now the same anger and outrage that Democrats rode last year will fittingly come back to wash them away over their failures.

I see a reckoning coming.

Update May 24: Oops.  Did I say 45% of Americans approved of Obama, versus 54% who disapproved?  That was yesterday.  Today only 44% of Americans approve of Obama, against 55% who disapprove.  And the President Approval Rating is at a negative eighteen.

Update May 25: Oops again.  Did I say 44% of Americans approve of Obama?  That’s no longer correct.  I’m sorry, but Obama is tanking so fast that it’s just hard to keep up with it.  Today, only 42% of Americans approve of this turd which is stinking up the White House.

From Rasmussen, May 25:

Overall, 42% of voters say they at least somewhat approve of the president’s performance. That is the lowest level of approval yet measured for this president. Fifty-six percent (56%) now disapprove of his performance.

And oh my, a whopping 20% more voters utterly despise Obama now than like him.

And that overwhelming majority of voters is going to want to come out and hurt somebody in November.

Between Rock and Hard Place: Hoping That Weasel Obama Breaks Ridiculous Promises

It’s not an easy position for a country to be in: we have a choice between having a craven liar for president, or having a president who keeps utterly stupid and immoral promises that undermine the country at every single turn.

This week, Obama is choosing to be a lying weasel who demagogued George Bush’s policies only to adopt those selfsame policies when it became evident just how truly asinine his own ideas were.

First, we hear that Obama decided to break his previous bright idea about releasing terrorists into the United States.  Thanks for not making me live next door to a jihadist murderer, Barry.  Much obliged.

Then Obama breaks his promise not to release Abu Ghraib pictures that by all accounts would have led to revenge-killings of American servicemen by nose-out-of-joint terrorists.  Again, appreciate it, Barry.  Keep up your lying ways so we don’t have to suffer under the most dumbass and immoral policies of any president in history.

And now we’ve got Obama breaking his word about giving terrorists the same rights as every American citizen (you know, the ones that they’re trying to murder).

President Barack Obama, who was one of the Bush administration’s sharpest critics concerning the military tribunals used to prosecute detainees at the Guantanamo detention facility, may be backing away from his election promise to abolish them.

Last week, a story in the New York Times reported that the Obama administration is now likely to retain the military commission system, but in a modified form. According to the Times, the announcement regarding this stunning about-face could come as early as next week.

“The more they look at it,” one official told The Times, “the more commissions don’t look as bad as they did on Jan. 20.”

As an indication of the high priority the military tribunals had for Obama, he requested on Inauguration Day a 120-day delay of all trials in progress. Two days later, the new president signed an order to close the Guantanamo facility itself within a year. Obama planned to transfer the detainees’ cases to civilian courts in the United States where the prisoners would enjoy the constitutional rights, albeit undeserved, of American citizens.

But the president, who during the election said, once elected, he would “reject the Military Commissions Act,” soon encountered hard, cold reality. In Obama’s case, his second thoughts about closing Guantanamo’s military commission system, which he once termed “an enormous failure”, arose after having reviewed the files of the 241 terrorists still held there.

Most of the remaining prisoners, he discovered, are hard-core al-Qaeda members who are too dangerous to be released. And if tried in a regular American court of law, it is estimated that 50 to 100 of them would be acquitted. The problem Obama failed to understand before making his rash promise is that there is not sufficient evidence to obtain their convictions in civilian courts.

There are also other headaches that would arise from civilian trials in the United States, which would not reflect favourably on the Obama administration. One is that the Guantanamo terrorists, including some involved in the 9/11 attack, would be able to grandstand and promote their cause in the courtroom, since now they would have an audience augmented by television cameras. Under the military system in Guantanamo, the trials are closed to the public and the cameras are absent. Reporters are, however, present in the courtroom.

Other problems concern the possibility of civilian judges throwing out key evidence if they deem it was obtained by questionable methods. Intelligence agencies would also be faced with the nightmarish prospect of having to reveal in public how they got their evidence (secret information is not revealed in open court in the Guantanamo legal system). In a civilian courtroom, terrorists would also take advantage of the legal right guaranteed to American citizens to invoke the Fifth Amendment.

But the biggest problem concerning stateside civilian trials for the Obama administration is what to do with the terrorists if they are acquitted, as surely dozens of them would be. Many of them cannot be returned to their country of origin because they will be tortured and possibly executed. Other countries, including those in Europe, are, with good reason, balking at accepting them, regarding the prisoners primarily as an American problem.

“If the detainees are not dangerous, then I don’t see any problem in the USA taking them in,” said one German politician.

The happiest people in all this would be the acquitted terrorists themselves. Some of the Guantanamo prisoners have openly admitted to their American captors their intention to return to terrorism when released. Other former Guantanamo detainees have already done so. So for those still wanting to kill as many Americans as possible, they would love to be set loose in the United States.

THANK YOU, Barry Hussein!  Now there’s less of a chance that these monsters will be able to beat our easy-to-beat legal system so they won’t be able to murder more Americans!  You’re a prince of the realm for breaking your word on that one.  Thank you for demagoguing an issue only to backstab and lie to your idiot supporters!

And, we learn in an AP article about the same broken promise that this means that Obama will be breaking ANOTHER stupid and immoral promise to close down the Guantanamo Bay detention facility that kept prevented these monsters from harming Americans in the first place.

Obama could roll back the January 2010 deadline, which he imposed on his second day in office. That could throw in doubt his campaign promise to shut down the prison…

Thank God we’ve got such a liar for a president.  In the case of our Fool-in-Chief, it’s better to have him breaking one stupid promise after another than keeping one stupid promise after another.

Of course, sometimes having a Liar-in-Chief gets pretty confusing: such as when Obama promises to “look forward rather than backward” rather than criminalize Bush officials, only to almost immediately break that promise by subsequently saying he’d turn them over to his Justice Department, only to YET AGAIN go back on himself by saying he didn’t want to do the thing that he earlier said he’d do before saying he wouldn’t do that thing…

Anyway, the current situation is that Barry Hussein is finally keeping his fool mouth shut by staying out of the whole conversation of prosecuting Bush officials for waterboarding while Nancy Pelosi twists in the wind as a result of her own damn repeated lies.

Liar or fool.  In the case of our current president, we clearly have both in one teleprompter-clinging package.

What Do You Mean, Terrorists Still Target U.S. After We Elected Obama?

We’ve been told stuff like, “A Barack Obama Presidency Will Restore America’s Prestige.”  We’ve been told Obama “would begin a presidency with tremendous potential to heal U.S. relations with much of the world.”

We’ve been told all kinds of bogus crap.

The reality is that everybody who hated us before will still hate us now.  The only diffrence after this election is that those enemies know that we elected an appeasing lightweight whom they think they can push around.  Essentially, we decided we wanted a poodle instead of a rottweiler.

Regardless of the “If we elect Barack Obama, the world will love us, all the prestige we lost under Bush will be restored, the world will respect us, and the sugar plum fairies will sprinke pixie dust on the whole wide wonderful world” narrative we’ve been fed, the reality just aint going to be like that.

You’ve heard of the massive, well-coordinated attack in seven locations in India’s financial capital, Mumbia?  Maybe you also heard stuff like this:

“They were talking about British and Americans specifically. There was an Italian guy, who, you know, they said: ‘Where are you from?” and he said he’s from Italy and they said ‘fine’ and they left him alone. And I thought: ‘Fine, they’re going to shoot me if they ask me anything — and thank God they didn’t,” he said.

That from an Associated Press story entitled, “Terrorist attacks in India target Americans; hostages taken, death toll rising.”

Well, that isn’t very nice of them.

Maybe they didn’t hear that we elected this glorious “transformational figure” to be our new prom-king-in-chief?

At the same time we’ve got terrorists trying to target Americans in India, we’ve got terrorists threatening to attack the New York subway system.

Liberals gave George Bush as much hell as they possibly could have during his presidency.  They opposed the Patriot Act, opposed Gitmo, opposed interrogating terrorists, opposed domestic wiretapping of international calls from terrorists, opposed that we didn’t give full constitutional protections to terrorists, opposed pretty much everything President Bush tried to do to fight the war on terror or to keep us safe at home.  And what would they have done if we HAD suffered another attack during his presidency?  They would have screamed that he didn’t keep us safe!

We’ve also got Russia threatening the United States over US missile defense plans in eastern Europe.  And we’ve got Venezuelan warships taking part in war exercises with a Russian naval group during an unprecedented visit to Venezuela by a Russian leader to further solidify an alliance between oil giants.

Of course, that’s a drop in the bucket compared with the very real possibility that Israel will attack Iran over that country’s nuclear weapons program precisely because they may not believe that a President Obama would be up to the job.

Here we are, waiting for the brand new wonderful world that Dear Leader Barack Obama’s “gonna lead us” into.  So far, the media has been unrelentingly unfair in its biased coverage of the political campaign.  The same media that wouldn’t let Bush do anything right won’t let Obama do anything wrong.

But some point, we’re going to be forced to wake up, smell the coffee, and deal with reality.  And media sugarcoating won’t be enough to make our problems go away.

If we’re attacked by terrorists during Obama’s administration, it will be because he’s a weak, pathetic leader who can’t protect us.  If he fights our enemies, it’s because he’s a vicious bloodthirsty warmonger.  If he doesn’t fight our enemies, it’s because he’s an appeasing coward who would rather bow down and cringe than stand up and fight.  In other words, he’s going to find out that constant demonization swings both ways.

Jews And Americans Alike Need To Fear Obama Presidency

You often don’t hear the truth about a politician from his or her own lips.  Politicians know how to cautiously craft their speech; they know how to distort, misrepresent, and flat-out lie.  No, you often have to get the truth about a politician secondhand.

At the first World Policy Forum held in Evian, France (Barack Obama loves world policy forums and has chided Americans for not being able to speak French), Jesse Jackson had this prophetic word for his hearers:

PREPARE for a new America: That’s the message that the Rev. Jesse Jackson conveyed to participants in the first World Policy Forum, held at this French lakeside resort last week.

He promised “fundamental changes” in US foreign policy – saying America must “heal wounds” it has caused to other nations, revive its alliances and apologize for the “arrogance of the Bush administration.”

The most important change would occur in the Middle East, where “decades of putting Israel’s interests first” would end.

Jackson believes that, although “Zionists who have controlled American policy for decades” remain strong, they’ll lose a great deal of their clout when Barack Obama enters the White House.

“Obama is about change,” Jackson told me in a wide-ranging conversation. “And the change that Obama promises is not limited to what we do in America itself. It is a change of the way America looks at the world and its place in it.”

Jackson warns that he isn’t an Obama confidant or adviser, “just a supporter.” But he adds that Obama has been “a neighbor or, better still, a member of the family.” Jackson’s son has been a close friend of Obama for years, and Jackson’s daughter went to school with Obama’s wife Michelle.

“We helped him start his career,” says Jackson. “And then we were always there to help him move ahead. He is the continuation of our struggle for justice not only for the black people but also for all those who have been wronged.”

In other words, the guy who has known Obama for years, known his family, and helped him get his start in politics says, “Be afraid, Jew: Obama is going to end your world in order to build a better one.”

France loves Obama.  But Jews shouldn’t  And Israelies certainly shouldn’t.  You can’t trust him on his stand for Israel.  He’ll say whatever he needs to say, and you won’t know what he really believes until he gets in power.  To Jews he said, “Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel, and it must remain undivided.”  And then he turned right around and said to Arabs, “Well, obviously, it’s going to be up to the parties to negotiate a range of these issues. And Jerusalem will be part of those negotiations.”  You don’t know Barack Obama.  But Jesse Jackson sure knows him.

By the way, France willingly participated in helping the Nazis round up Jews to feed into their Holocaust death machine.  And it still has a great deal of Antisemitism to this day.

Last week I wrote an article titled, “Barack Obama Proclaimed As Messiah – The Beast Is Coming.”  I conclude in that article: “The United States isn’t mentioned in Bible prophecy.  Now we begin to see why: we wont’ matter because our economy will be in ruins.  And we certainly won’t be the kind of nation that will be willing to come to Israel’s aid against the beast when they need us most.”  Frankly, I didn’t realize that Barack Obama already had undeclared plans to undermine the Jewish state in order to advance his idea of a “new America” that will “fundamentally change its foreign policy” to “heal wounds” by cutting “Zionists” out of the picture.

Christians like myself view Jews as “God’s canary in the mine.”  How a nation treats the Jews demonstrates its moral condition.  As a nation blesses the Jews, God will bless that nation.  And as a nation curses the Jews, God will curse them (eg., Genesis 12:3).  But as I have already also written, Barack Obama would be President of God damn America.  So it doesn’t surprise me at all to learn from a key longtime Obama confidant that Barack Hussein Obama would pursue a policy that would damn America.

It was primarily American Jews – greatly assisted by American Christians who believed the Bible – who helped conceive and lay the groundwork for a Jewish state in the land that God gave to Abraham and his descendants as an eternal possession (Genesis 17:8).  The United States was the first nation to officially recognize the state of Israel.  And the United States has been a better friend of Israel and the Jew than any nation in the history of the world.  And the United States has been blessed as no other nation in the history of the world, I believe, as a direct result.

Barack Obama, the false messiah who would undermine this nation’s foundations and leave it a hollow shell by means of his disastrous policies, would sever that relationship of blessing and turn it unto divine cursing, according to a happy Jesse Jackson.

Let us not forget that Jeremiah Wright engaged in antisemitic rhetoric at Barack Obama’s church; and that Barack Obama’s Trinity United Church named vitriolic Antisemite Louis Farrakhan it’s Man of the Year; and that Barack Obama actually helped lead Louis Farrakhan’s Million Man March.  And then Louis Farrakhan in turn declares that Barack Obama is the messiah.

Campbell Brown wrote a commentary titled, “So what if Obama were a Muslim or an Arab?”  I wrote an article titled “Why Islamic Extremists Support Democrats And Obama” without mentioning either Obama’s race or religion.  With all due respects to Campbell Brown, if Barack Obama is elected President, we are going to very soon discover that worldviews matter.  And Frank Marshall Davis, Saul Alinsky, Jeremiah Wright, Michael Pfleger, William Ayers, Louis Farrakhan, ACORN, and yes, Jesse Jackson ought to tell us that Barack Hussein Obama has a very radical worldview, indeed.  He has simply been smart enough to conceal both his worldview and his agenda.

Barack Obama will bring monumental change, no question about it.  Given the fact that if he is elected, he will likely have such an overwhelming majority under Nancy Pelosi’s House of Representatives and Harry Reid’s Senate that Republicans won’t be able to do anything about anything, Obama would likely have more power than any President in our lifetimes.  There will be change like we have never seen.

God bless America, or God damn America: which one will we choose?

Barack Obama Proclaimed As “The Messiah” – The Beast Is Coming

People who trust the Bible have known he was coming: the false Messiah, the Antichrist (1 John 2:18), the Beast of Revelation (Rev 13:1) and the little horn of Daniel (Dan 7:8).  And now we can know that he is coming soon, if he is not already among us even now.

The media have had a bizarre fascination with Barack Obama for some time.  We’ve had photographs of Barack Obama in Reuters and Associated Press stories with a deliberate halo over his head in a clear propaganda effort.  We’ve got columnists like Mark Morford calling Obama a “Lightworker” and using incredibly spiritual language to describe the Obama presence.

But Louis Farrakhan nailed it on the head: Barack Hussein Obama is The Messiah:

“You are the instruments that God is gonna use to bring about universal change, and that is why Barack has captured the youth. And he has involved young people in a political process that they didn’t care anything about. That’s a sign. When the Messiah speaks, the youth will hear, and the Messiah is absolutely speaking.”

We can add that to the glossy-eyed little brainwashed children singing praised to Obama. One little girl – in a big-liberal-money-assisted “community event” sang, “We’re gonna spread happiness! We’re gonna spread freeeeedom! Obama’s gonna change it, Obama’s gonna lead ‘em…”

John McCain hasn’t appeared in Reuters or the AP bearing a beatific halo.  Children haven’t sung praises to him.  He hasn’t been described as a messiah.  And he certainly hasn’t been proclaimed to be “the Messiah” by Louis Farrakhan.

The REAL Messiah won’t come until after the false one has appeared to deceive the world (Revelation 13:1 cf. 19:11).  And boy is the world ripe for the false one!  In the age of the internet and the explosion of information, we are seeing propaganda in amounts that boggle the mind from the mainstream media.

Antichrist won’t come during a time when everything is going well; he’ll come during a time of global crisis; he’ll appear to “solve all our problems” even as he sets up the world for persecution, disaster, and holocaust like the world has never seen.

Barack Obama has had a relationship with this false prophet (see Revelation 16:13) Louis Farrakhan for years.  He helped lead Farrakhan’s Nation of Islam-sponsored “Million Man March” (which Jeremiah Wright helped organize).  Obama was an active part of the radical Marxist “black theology” Trinity United Church for 23 years, which honored radical racist anti-Semite Nation of Islam leader Farrakhan with its Lifetime Achievement Trumpeteer Award.  He has been mentored for all those years by the radical Jeremiah Wright, who has frequently praised and honored Louis Farrakhan.

Is Barack Obama the Antichrist?  There sure are a lot of signs that he is in the media!  But I believe that he is just one of the false messiahs (Matthew 24:24).  Rather than being THE Antichrist, I believe that Obama is just one of the false messiahs who will so completely screw up the United States and the world that Antichrist will be able to emerge to “save the day.”

The United States isn’t mentioned in Bible prophecy.  Now we begin to see why: we wont’ matter because our economy will be in ruins.  And we certainly won’t be the kind of nation that will be willing to come to Israel’s aid against the Beast when they need us most.

Last days, here we come.  The race toward Armageddon (Revelation 16:16) begins.

Jimmy Carter Addresses Barak Obama’s Convention: How Appropriate

It is ironically appropriate that Jimmy Carter will be one of the first speakers to address the Democratic National Convention. The worst President in recent American history should be present to pass on the baton of naive incompetence to his successor.

A Newsmax article, appropriately titled, “Jimmy Carter’s Trail of Disaster,” underscores just how colossal a failure Jimmy Carter has been in foreign policy for years. But nowhere was that failure more costly or pathetic than his failure on Iran. Christopher Ruddy writes:

The media would have us forget Jimmy Carter’s presidential record.

But I won’t.

Remember Carter’s human rights program, where he demanded the Shah of Iran step down and turn over power to the Ayatollah Khomeini?

No matter that Khomeini was a madman. Carter had the U.S. Pentagon tell the Shah’s top military commanders – about 150 of them – to acquiesce to the Ayatollah and not fight him.

The Shah’s military listened to Carter. All of them were murdered in one of the Ayatollah’s first acts.

By allowing the Shah to fall, Carter created one of the most militant anti-American dictatorships ever.

Soon the new Iranian government was ransacking our embassy and held hostage its staff for over a year. Only President Reagan’s election gave Iran the impetus to release the hostages.

The man who will be addressing the Democratic National Convention personally presided over the abandonment of an Iranian government that had been America’s strongest ally in the Middle East under the Shah and actually enabled its transformation into America’s greatest enemy in the Middle East under the Ayatollah.

It’s not all Carter’s and Obama’s fault. Failure, weakness, and appeasement are in their blood as Democrats. Read the INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY piece titled, “97 Reasons Democrats Are Weak On Defense And Can’t Be Trusted To Govern In Wartime“, for more on that. Jimmy Carter features prominently in those 97 reasons.

When Jimmy Carter speaks, don’t bother listening to any of his pseudo-humanitarian blather. Think rather of the similarities between the failure Jimmy Carter and the failure-waiting-to-happen Barack Obama.

Think of how Barack Obama has already demonstrated an astonishing failure of naiveté and ignorance when he said that “Iran does not pose a serious threat to us.” And that “If Iran ever tried to pose a serious threat to us, they wouldn’t stand a chance.”

Iran is clearly determined to progress into a nuclear-armed state, and could even have the bomb within six months if it pulled out all the stops. With nuclear weapons, Iran would be impervious to attack – even if it masterminded the next 9/11 attack against us. To underestimate either their threat or their evil is the very worst kind of folly.

We have seen Barack Obama issue horrible double-minded statements that reveal both frightening weakness and indecisiveness. Obama said that Jerusalem must remain the undivided capital of Israel to Jewish groups, and then said to Palestinians that the issue of Jerusalem would be subject to negotiation. Jerusalem is the hottest, most easily-ignitable flash point in the history of the world; you simply DO NOT commit such massive blunders with this piece of real estate. Obama’s indecision and pandering weakness on Jerusalem reveals exactly the sort of man who would ignorantly empower our worst enemies and then indecisively sit on his hands while they made us look like fools, as Carter did with Iran before and after the Ayatollah seized our embassy and held Americans as hostages.

The similarity between Jimmy Carter and Barack Obama does not end with naiveté and indecisiveness. It extends into their philosophy.

Both men have exhibited a degree of moral equivalence that prevents them from seeing the difference between the good and the evil.

Jimmy Carter has displayed a shocking inability to see the difference between democratic Israelis trying to protect themselves from terrorism, and nihilist terrorists out to kill as many Jewish women and children as possible:

I don’t consider… I wasn’t equating the Palestinian missiles with terrorism. But when the Palestinians commit terrorist acts, and I mean when a person blows himself up within a bus full of civilians, or when the target of the operation is women and children – such acts create a rejection of the Palestinians among those who care about them. It turns the world away from sympathy and support for the Palestinian people. That’s why I said that acts of terrorism like I just described are suicidal for the popularity and support for the Palestinian cause. In my book, I talk about violence from both sides, and I describe very carefully and accurately the number of casualties among Palestinians and Israelis, including children. The number of Palestinian children who died because of the violence is five times greater than the number of Israeli children, and I condemn this kind of violence on both sides.

Carter was forced to apologize for what he claimed were misconstrued statements. But Alan Dershowitz has come to see two Carters – what he calls the “Brandeis Carter” who says the right things in democratic forums, and the “Al Jazeera Carter” who makes shocking statements about the state of Israel.

The very title of Jimmy Carter’s book – Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid – reveals not only an incipient antisemitism, with Israel depicted as an apartheid (and therefore racist and illegitimate) state, but also a shocking degree of moral equivalence.

American Thinker has an article titled, “Obama’s Moral Equivalence Problem,” that discusses this very same tendency on the part of Barack Obama. Obama not only demonstrated this in his initial patronizing statement for both Georgia and Russia to stop fighting (lumping the invaded democracy in the same category as the attacking autocracy), but he then proceeded to go even further by comparing Russia’s actions to the United States’ action in its invasion of Iraq.

If that is not bad enough, Joe Biden – Obama’s pick for running mate – also has a significant history of failure to understand Iran or deal with the threat that this terrorist state presents to the United States.

As Jimmy Carter speaks, and throughout this convention, we should seriously consider the Carter years, and the return to unmitigated disaster the Obama years would bring.

Looming War In Eastern Europe: Deja Vu All Over Again

For the historically literate, the picture of Eastern Europe today is disturbingly reminiscent of the view circa 1939. That was the year that Nazi Germany – having provided pseudo-justifications based on staged provocations – invaded first Czechoslovakia and then Poland. Throughout the entire period leading up to these military invasions, the Western world weakly stood by and did nothing but “dialogue.”

As hundreds of Russian tanks poured into his country, CNN reporter Susan Malveaux asked Georgian President Saakashvili:

MALVEAUX: Have you reached out to them? Do you feel there’s any room for negotiation or at least to begin a dialogue or discussions?

The problem has been that Russia has done its “negotiating” with tanks.

The UK Telgraph runs a story by Josh Bolton the editors titled, “The US fiddled while Georgia burned.” And this is undoubtedly true (as Bolton himself acknowledges). But at least the US’ “fiddling” involved doing something (in the sense of trying to get Georgia admitted to NATO, which would have circumvented this entire sad affair). Europe stood by and did absolutely nothing while Georgia burned.  And the so-called “cease fire agreement” that France proffered essentially allows Russia to remain in Georgian territory for as long as they like.  Many believe that the presence of Russian forces only a few miles from the Georgian capital is a naked attempt to topple the democratic government.

Just as with Iraq, European intransigence to sound diplomatic policy led to war. By refusing to accept the United States’ demand to require meaningful weapons inspections on Iraq, the U.N. in general and France and Russia in particular took every option but open war off the table for America. And by refusing to allow the U.S.-backed Georgian bid to join NATO, our European “allies” left a democratic and pro-Western former Soviet State vulnerable to precisely the sort of attack that totalitarian Russia launched.

Josh Bolton describes the European diplomatic initiative in shades of the infamous Munich Agreement:

The European Union took the lead in diplomacy, with results approaching Neville Chamberlain’s moment in the spotlight at Munich: a ceasefire that failed to mention Georgia’s territorial integrity, and that all but gave Russia permission to continue its military operations as a “peacekeeping” force anywhere in Georgia. More troubling, over the long term, was that the EU saw its task as being mediator – its favourite role in the world – between Georgia and Russia, rather than an advocate for the victim of aggression.

After Neville Chamberlain returned from signing the infamous agreement with Hitler, and appeasing an evil tyrant in the name of “peace in our time,” an embittered Winston Churchill observed:

“You were given the choice between war and dishonor. You chose dishonor and you will have war.”

Josh Bolton believes that “the extent of the wreckage [of Georgia] reaches far beyond that small country.” He goes on to write:

The West, collectively, failed in this crisis. Georgia wasted its dime making that famous 3am telephone call to the White House, the one Hillary Clinton referred to in a campaign ad questioning Barack Obama’s fitness for the Presidency. Moreover, the blood on the Bear’s claws did not go unobserved in other states that were once part of the Soviet Union. Russia demonstrated unambiguously that it could have marched directly to Tbilisi and installed a puppet government before any Western leader was able to turn away from the Olympic Games. It could, presumably, do the same to them.

Fear was one reaction Russia wanted to provoke, and fear it has achieved, not just in the “Near Abroad” but in the capitals of Western Europe as well. But its main objective was hegemony, a hegemony it demonstrated by pledging to reconstruct Tskhinvali, the capital of its once and no-longer-future possession, South Ossetia. The contrast is stark: a real demonstration of using sticks and carrots, the kind that American and European diplomats only talk about. Moreover, Russia is now within an eyelash of dominating the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline, the only route out of the Caspian Sea region not now controlled by either Russia or Iran. Losing this would be dramatically unhelpful if we hope for continued reductions in global petroleum prices, and energy independence from unfriendly, or potentially unfriendly, states.

It profits us little to blame Georgia for “provoking” the Russian attack. Nor is it becoming of the United States to have anonymous officials from its State Department telling reporters, as they did earlier this week, that they had warned Georgia not to provoke Russia. This confrontation is not about who violated the Marquess of Queensbury rules in South Ossetia, where ethnic violence has been a fact of life since the break-up of the Soviet Union on December 31, 1991 – and, indeed, long before. Instead, we are facing the much larger issue of how Russia plans to behave in international affairs for decades to come. Whether Mikhail Saakashvili “provoked” the Russians on August 8, or September 8, or whenever, this rape was well-planned and clearly coming, given Georgia’s manifest unwillingness to be “Finlandized” – the Cold War term for effectively losing your foreign-policy independence.

And now we are already beginning to see not only “how Russia plans to behave in international affairs for decades to come”, but right in the here and now.

In a statement about Poland that ought to send shivers up the spine of any thinking human being, a top Russian general added to the rhetoric of President Dmitry Medveded:

Only 24 hours after the weapons agreement was signed Russia’s deputy chief of staff warned Poland “is exposing itself to a strike 100 per cent”.

General Anatoly Nogovitsyn said that any new US assets in Europe could come under Russian nuclear attack with his forces targeting “the allies of countries having nuclear weapons”.

He told Russia’s Interfax news agency: “By hosting these, Poland is making itself a target. This is 100 per cent certain. It becomes a target for attack. Such targets are destroyed as a first priority.”

Russia’s nuclear rhetoric marks an intense new phase in the war of words over Georgia. The Caucasus conflict has spiralled into a Cold War style confrontation between Moscow and Washington in less than a week.

The stand off between the two cold War powers was underlined by Russian president Dmitry Medvedev, who dismissed US claims that the silo is a deterrent against ‘rogue states’ like Iran as “a fairy tale”. He told reporters at the Black Sea resort of Sochi: “The deployment of new missile defence facilities in Europe is aimed against the Russian Federation.”

Poland and a few other former Soviet Republicans who do not want to become future Russian republics are moving toward official relationships with the United States and Western alliances such as NATO. We must stop attempting to appease rogue and tyrant states for the sake of going along to get along in the short term and clearly and strongly back Western-leaning democratic states.

Again, Bolton is right on target:

Europe’s rejection this spring of President Bush’s proposal to start Ukraine and Georgia towards Nato membership was the real provocation to Russia, because it exposed Western weakness and timidity. As long as that perception exists in Moscow, the risk to other former Soviet territories – and in precarious regions such as the Middle East – will remain.

Obviously, not all former Soviet states are as critical to Nato as Ukraine, because of its size and strategic location, or Georgia, because of its importance to our access to the Caspian Basin’s oil and natural gas reserves. Moreover, not all of them meet fundamental Nato prerequisites. But we must now review our relationship with all of them. This, in effect, Nato failed to do after the Orange and Rose Revolutions, leaving us in our present untenable position.

By its actions in Georgia, Russia has made clear that its long-range objective is to fill that “gap” if we do not. That, as Western leaders like to say, is “unacceptable”. Accordingly, we should have a foreign-minister-level meeting of Nato to reverse the spring capitulation at Bucharest, and to decide that Georgia and Ukraine will be Nato’s next members. By drawing the line clearly, we are not provoking Russia, but doing just the opposite: letting them know that aggressive behaviour will result in costs that they will not want to bear, thus stabilising a critical seam between Russia and the West. In effect, we have already done this successfully with Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.

Diplomacy is always worth pursuing. But diplomacy that is not backed with power and the willingness to use it is meaningless, and will always be recognized as such by tyrants and terrorists.

As we look at Russian totalitarian imperialism in Eastern Europe, and contemplate the looming menace of a nuclear-weapons-armed Iran, we must realize that much of the world is in the same mindset that the world was in in 1938. Only by recognizing that we must stand strongly against such developments will we be able to avoid the next catastrophic global harvest of death.

This is as certain as the fact that World War III follows World War II.

Some Thoughts On The Russian Invasion Of Georgia

Vladimir Putin – who is most likely as much in control of Russia as he ever was – has said that the collapse of the U.S.S.R. ranks as “the greatest political catastrophe in history” and claimed that its reintegration was a matter of “historical destiny.” And he has been working for years toward reunifying and synchronizing the former Soviet empire under Russian rule.

But this was an empire that Ronald Reagan described as evil. The great and just passed Soviet dissident Alexander Solzhenitsyn provided the intellectual and moral grounds for that assignation in his Harvard address, “A World Split Apart.” Solzhenitsyn began by saying, “Harvard’s motto is Veritas” (i.e., truth). And then he proceeded to launch into a sobering examination of Veritas.

It was a speech that excoriated not only the Soviet Union, but also the West for its immorality, materialism, and godlessness. It provoked outrage among liberal academia and sparked indignant editorials in the liberal media. “He believes himself to be in possession of The Truth,” the New York Times editorialized in what amounted to the ultimate postmodernist condemnation, “and so sees error wherever he looks.” But other columnists, such as Michael Novak, called the address, “The most important religious document of our time.”

Solzhenistsyn’s address raised postmodern issues and examined history in a distinctly Christian way. Its very title alluded to the postmodern condition: “A World Split Apart.” He affirmed traditional cultures against the all-encompassing mass culture of Western secularism. He dissected the West’s materialism and concern for comfort and pleasure, which he argued had drained away our capacity for courage and sacrifice. he deplored the way our laws had been disconnected from morality. “Society has turned out to have scarce defense against the abyss of human decadence, for example against the misuse of liberty for moral violence against young people, such as motion pictures full of pornography, crime, and horror,” he said. He blasted the irresponsibility of the news media and the West’s “TV stupor.” Your scholars are free in the legal sense,” he said, “but they are hemmed in by the idols of the prevailing fad.” He attacked “humanism which has lost its Christian heritage,” and cited the obsolescence of the “ossified formulas of the Enlightenment.”

Solzhenistsyn’s point was that the West had largely forfeited the moral and intellectual resources needed to confront genuine evil. With no absolute canons of objective truth, the moral and even the rational is replaced by the aesthetic. We believe in what we like. Today, people unused to thinking in terms of absolute, objective truth still have opinions and strongly held beliefs. In fact, their beliefs prove to be even more difficult to dislodge, because they admit to no ultimate external criteria by which they can be judged and be shown to be wrong. Since their beliefs are a function of the will, they cling to them willfully. Since their beliefs will tend to have no foundation other than their preferences and personality, they will interpret any criticism of their beliefs as a personal attack. Engage practically anyone in a discussion of some controversial issue today, and this problem will show itself.

As evil rises on the march, how do we confront it, when we do not even believe that it exists or know what it is? How can we unify to stop it when we are fractured into this identity group or that? How do we rise up and sacrifice to stop such evil when we are focused on our immediate comforts and environments?

Russia under former KGB officer Vladimir Putin has largely eradicated the fledgling democracy that had slowly been building and embracing a totalitarian state.

We are in a malaise. And I believe that it is the outrage over that malaise that prompted Paul Zannucci to write what he described as “an unadulterated rant.”

It sounds like the Russians are ceasing their military operations. Whether they will now consolidate their gains, or withdraw, is an open question. Very likely they will do the former, and the democratically elected government will give way to a Russian-installed puppet government. Certainly the two Georgian provinces that were leaning toward Russia will be seized from Georgia.

But this is very likely not the end of Russian maneuvers in their former satellites. Ukraine is very likely next. After the dust-up from Georgia begins to settle, I believe we will see Russia begin to exercise the same under-the-radar political strong-arm tactics that it used against Georgia prior to the shooting.

Ultimately, I believe that a coalition based on mutual self-interests will form between Russia and Islam. Russia wants its former satellites back; Muslims want Israel to be wiped off the map. And the large Muslim populations of eastern Europe may agree to Russian headship if Russia helps them annihilate the state of Israel.

We can already see this alliance forming, as Russia increasingly forms a military alliance with the rogue Islamic state of Iran.

And that is probably a major part of the America hesitation in dealing with the Russian invasion of Georgia: if we alienate Russia, they won’t help us reign in the nuclear ambitions of Iran.

My view is this: if we are counting on Russia – which has actively been aiding Iran’s nuclear ambitions by providing equipment and expertise – to help us dissuade Iran from doing what it has repeatedly asserted that it is intent upon doing, then we might as well be waiting for a cold day in hell.

Do we have the moral will to prevent these frightening scenarios from unfolding?

If we look back to Hitler’s Nazi Germany, we see Hitler boldly moving on one of his neighbors (e.g., Czechoslovakia, Poland), and then waiting to see what the international reaction would be. When he sensed the reaction was weak, he moved again. And he kept moving in bolder and bolder fashion until a pacifistic West finally woke up to a global conflagration that it had failed both to prevent or even to prepare for.

Most of the world – including our “allies” in the West – have succumbed to a malaise that is frighteningly similar to that of their ancestors. Our European allies have come to believe that we can appease evil by compromising and bargaining with it. Military action is to be avoided at all cost.

Meanwhile, our enemies feel no such similar constraints about using military action and/or terrorism to obtain their ends.

We can no longer count on our allies to truly stand with us. It is up to the United States to realize that evil can no more be contained than cancer, that cancer spreads unless destroyed, and that force must be met with force. Meanwhile, more and more of our enemies and former enemies are beginning to take steps that will lead to terrifying consequences in the years to come unless they are stopped.

Let me say, by way of a political observation, that the United States cannot prevent or stand against evil by becoming more like our European allies. Both the history of human civilization and a study of the great religious systems of man tell us that we cannot compromise with evil. Winston Churchill did not argue that we should be like Europe when it surrendered and compromised and ignored the storm that was overtaking it; he argued that Britain had to stand against Nazi fascism with everything it had. We must stand against evil. Even if that means standing alone.

It’s going to be up to the United States and Israel to contain Iran’s nuclear ambitions. And it’s primarily going to be up to the United States to contain Russia’s ambition to restore its former Soviet-era territorial greatness.

Can we mobilize the awareness, the courage, and the willingness to sacrifice to prevent these things from happening?

Only if we begin by listening to the warning of the late, great Alexander Solzhenitsyn.

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

According to most sources, oil could soar to as much as $400 a barell (that’s over 2 3/4 TIMES its current price of $144 as of July 2) if Iran shuts down the Strait of Hormuz.

The problem is that Iran promised the world that it would do precisely that if Israel attempts to attack its nuclear facilities.

An impending Israeli attack is itself a result of the failure of liberalism.  The European Union – in refusing to implement ANY truly tough sanctions against Iran – is forcing Israel’s hand.  Liberals will decry “warlike” Israel, but will be those weak, gutless, spineless liberals who refused to stand up against Iran’s nuclear program in a meaningful way that are responsible – NOT Israel.  When (note: not if) Israel strikes Iran, it will be doing so as an act of sheer survival against a country which has for years promised to wipe Israel off the map as soon as it possessed the means to do so.

Genuinely tough UN sanctions, combined with a united international stand against Iran being allowed to even come close to developing nuclear weapons, would have very likely had a good chance of success.  But the liberal/socialist world never learns.  We are repeating the failures that led up to the Iraq invasion, during which time rampant UN corruption (the oil for food program) and corrupt countries (Russia and France) opposed any sanction that would have forced Iraq to truly declare its WMD capabilities.

Teddy Roosevelt said America should speak softly and carry a big stick.  Modern liberals argue that we should throw the stick away altogether and give holier-than-thou lectures.

The primary reason the United States assumed a strong foreign policy stance – and created a powerful military to back up its foreign policy – is because two world wars and millions of American deaths served to demonstrate the fact that enemy tyrants will make us pay dearly for being weak in the face of threats against us.  Yet American liberals look longingly at the demilitarized socialist states of Europe, and at their laissez faire attitude toward despicable and vicious regimes, and they want to pursue a similar  approach in the United States.  The fact remains, however, that it was the strength and resolve of American power that permitted the Europeans to be free to embrace their new attitudes – first from the Nazi conquest and then from Communist expansion.

But let us put this gargantuan failure of liberal foreign policy aside and instead focus on another issue which is more important to most Americans (although certainly not to Israelis facing a new Holocaust at Iranian hands): the shockingly high prices that will most assuredly ensue when Israel attacks Iran’s nuclear sites.

About half the world’s oil supply flows through the Strait of Hormuz.  It is about 25 miles wide, and provides Iran with a easy choke point to stop the oil flow.

A Jun. 11, 2008 Time Magazine story titled, “How Iran Has Bush Over a Barrel” puts the U.S.’s dilemma thusly:

If wasn’t crystal clear before it certainly should be by now: the Bush Administration can’t afford to attack Iran, even if it finds it necessary to do so for the sake of preventing the very real probability of World War III. With gas already at $4 a gallon and rising almost every day, Iran figuratively and literally has the United States over a barrel. As much as the Administration is tempted, it is not about to test Iran’s promise to “explode” the Middle East if it is attacked.

The Iranians haven’t been shy about making clear what’s at stake. If the U.S. or Israel so much as drops a bomb on one of its reactors or its military training camps, Iran will shut down Gulf oil exports by launching a barrage of Chinese Silkworm missiles on tankers in the Strait of Hormuz and Arab oil facilities. In the worst case scenario, seventeen million barrels of oil would come off world markets.

One oil speculator told me that oil would hit $200 a barrel within minutes. But Iran’s official news agency, Fars, puts it at $300 a barrel. I asked him if Iran is right, what does that mean?

“Four-dollar-a-gallon of gasoline only reflects $100 oil because the refiners’ margins are squeezed,” he said. “At $300, you have $12 a gallon of gasoline and riots in Newark, Los Angeles, Harlem, Oakland, Cleveland, Detroit, Dallas.”

But it didn’t have to be this way – even given gutless socialist Europe’s abject refusal to provide any real deterrant that would have made Iran think twice about continuing its nuclear ambitions.

Had Democrats allowed the United States to utilize its own massive oil resources, the United States would have been almost completely immune from this looming crisis.  For information on the Democrat’s culpability in refusing to take advantage of our own energy independence, read my article available here.

The United States is literally sitting on about 170 billion barrels of oil, according to the Geological Survey and Congressional Research Service.

One of our best [short-term] prospects is Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, which geologists say contains billions [the official estimate is 15.6 billion] of barrels of recoverable oil. If President Clinton hadn’t bowed to Wilderness Society demands and vetoed 1995 [Republican-sponsored and supported] legislation, we’d be producing a million barrels a day from ANWR right now. That’s equal to US imports from Saudi Arabia, at $50 billion annually.

Instead, we are currently paying over $4.00 for a gallon of gas, and we are staring into the terrifying prospect of having to pay $12 for that gallon in the near future.

One day, untold years into the future, archaeologists and anthropologists will come to realize that political liberalism invariably resulted in the suicide of nations and of Western civilization in the 20th and 21st centuries.  But tragically, that day of realization has not yet arrived.  And so the United States trudges along on the same path once taken by the Dodo bird.

The dodo bird will be less responsible for its downfall than the United States.  The dodo bird needed something for survival it didn’t have.  The United states, by contrast, refused to use what it actually had in its possession even when it needed it.

Even if the United States and the world manages to dodge the looming confrontation between Israel and Iran, the price of international oil will continue to go up, and it will continue to be subject to one crisis after another as it is produced in and passes through the world’s most chaos-prone nations.  Oil will become more and more scarce as China, India, and the developing world continue to gobble it up.  And the price of gasoline will contine to rise.

And the dramatic rise of the price of gasoline does not just affect our travel plans.  It is directly tied in with our national productivity and our economy.

In a AP story titled, “It’s official: The market is in bear territory: Stocks drop after oil hits new high, concerns that GM could run out of cash,” it was reported that:

NEW YORK – Wall Street resumed its sell-off Wednesday after oil hit a new record and a bearish analyst report renewed concerns that General Motors Corp. could run out of cash.

The stock market’s pullback, which accelerated in the final hours of the week’s last full trading session, left the Dow Jones industrial average officially in bear market territory, with the blue chips having fallen more than 20 percent from their October highs.

Oil surged to new records above $144 a barrel as the government reported a bigger-than-expected drop in U.S. supplies and as investors worried about tensions in the Middle East.

The July 1 DOW figures and analysis about those figures demonstrated how market performance was exactly proportional to the rise of the price of oil.  Oil is the grease that lubes our entire market structure.  More expensive oil makes virtually every product more expensive even as it cuts down on American’s individual purchasing power.

And the Demcorats have for decades now resisted any effort to produce a stable long-term source of domestic oil.  Even in the aftermath of the OPEC embargo that ravaged our economy in the 1970s, Democrats have refused to allow the United States to separate itself from OPEC and other foreign oil.

Hopefully, Americans will recognize the threat that Democrats are to our economy, our security, and our way of life this November.  If not, I can guarantee you that America will continue to suffer the consequences of rising fuel prices until it comes to its senses and elects enough Republicans to overturn the irrational Democrat-implemented drilling bans.

I only hope that we come to that moment of national lucidity before the next crisis strangles our weakening economy.  If we do not act to ensure a stable domestic energy supply in the very near future, we may well find ourselves quickly bleeding to death and desperately needing a transfusion that will not come in time to save us.