Good editorial..
Posted on 05/10/2008 5:34:54 AM PDT by rhema
Gasoline prices are up. Isn't that thrilling?
We haven't caught Western Europe yet, where they're shelling out $7 a gallon. It's going to take a lot more lousy policymaking to get there, but we can do it.
For today, though, let's give ourselves a well-deserved pat on the back for some real progress. Sometimes, you've just got to stop and smell the ethanol.
We are oh-so-close to the day when abandoned monster pickups become roadside planters, 3-mile-per-gallon semis are museum pieces and we can pay a whole lot more not just for gas, but for everything.
You would think that the environmentalists we have to thank for so much of this — the ones who envision "walkable" cities bursting with eco-friendly tenements for car-free Americans, while the prairie reclaims the suburbs — would have hired a brass band by now.
They're smart enough to keep a low profile, though, and some of their most dedicated political surrogates are feigning anger at the pain American drivers are feeling and putting the blame wherever it's politically convenient.
Hillary Clinton, currently campaigning as Tough Hillary, has been telling her audiences, "We're going to go right at OPEC. ... They can no longer be a cartel."
That's up to her? She's got a better shot at using smart bombs to obliterate Iran than using smart lawyers to obliterate OPEC.
OPEC is only part of the problem, anyway, and it's a part beyond our control. A great deal of the problem is green-addled, gullible us. We, and our political representatives, have let ourselves get talked out of drilling for our own oil because doing so might scare the fish and inconvenience the caribou. Sitting under the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is 10 billion barrels of oil. That's about 15 years worth of imports from Saudi Arabia. And it will continue to sit until we begin to prize our freedom of movement more than the caribou's.
We've let ourselves get talked out of a lot of oil refining capacity, because refineries are yucky.
We've let ourselves get talked into producing all kinds of exotic mixtures of gasoline, sold according to season, that drive up prices of both food and fuel. And while we feed corn to their gas tanks, food riots break out elsewhere. (Caribou steaks, anyone?)
Now the eco-warriors and the big corporations (aren't we supposed to hate them?) that stand to profit (aren't we supposed to hate people who make money?) from getting picked by government as winners in the "renewable" energy sweepstakes want to talk us into raising consumer costs even more — a lot more.
They've finally got sweet-tempered, whale-saving, can-recycling, post-industrial Americans over a $120 barrel, and they want to sell us government subsidized gadgets not ready for market or not yet thought of.
Please. If windmills were the answer, there would be forests of them, all over the place, run by private industry at a profit.
Meanwhile, Congress talks of making it even more expensive for the remaining U.S. refineries to do their work, making it even harder to produce electricity from coal, making it even more difficult for what remains of U.S. manufacturing to survive.
All of those wrong turns are found in the Lieberman-Warner anti-global-warming bill, now working its way through the Senate. In a way, it's kind of cute: a do-nothing Congress out to solve a non-problem. But if it passes, it will be devastating.
And there's talk about a windfall profits tax on oil companies. And who do you suppose would really pay that? Not the oil companies: $4.50 a gallon at the pump, here we come. Yippee!
The supply of oil is both finite and artificially limited, and it's in greater demand than ever, so prices are up. But until someone comes up with a better way to power the world — a job government is both too stupid and too grasping to do properly — let's ease the self-inflicted pain.
We need to drill a lot more, refine a lot more and take an ax to regulatory red tape.
And in the meantime, most sheeple complain and watch American Idol.
Reminder
This Sunday on C-Span 2:
Yep. Open up the east and west coast for drilling and the Gulf of Texas as well. We need a right-now program of building about 30 nuke power plants to generate electricity for all the coming electric and hybrid cars.
Do those simple things and watch OPEC and the gang clean up their act.
Let us not forget, McShamesty is going to be a green president. He was one of republicans that voted against drilling in ANWR.
Sitting under the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is 10 billion barrels of oil. That's about 15 years worth of imports from Saudi Arabia. And it will continue to sit until we begin to prize our freedom of movement more than the caribou's.President Bush let us down. The Republican Party let us down. I will never forget this. I will never send another penny to the RNC or any other RINO. Only dedicated conservatives, with a solid grasp of market economics and a solid understanding of the connection between environmentalism and Marxism/Anti-Americanism will ever get any money from me or ever get my vote.
That goes for John "Mr. Green" McCain. Not one penny to you, Johnny boy. Not one single solitary cent from me.
If windmills were the answer, there would be forests of them, all over the place, run by private industry at a profit.Does anyone know a good site that compares BTU output from different sources of energy?
I've heard that all the windmills that currently exist in the world produce far less energy than a single small nuke reactor. I'd like to look at up for sure, but haven't had any luck finding the information.
Looks like a Kevin that has his stuff and ducks all in a row.
Too bad no one in power is listening.
Same here!!
While this editorial is correct in criticizing misguided and counterproductive environmental policies, it misses the boat on the recent dramatic surge in oil prices. We're in the midst of a technical commodities bubble.
BTW, I heard an oil analyst predicting 7$ per gallon gasoline within 12-18 months.
If we had been drilling and not giving special rights to the serria club we could have had the world export market in oil and have the deficit payed by American oil. American oil production had dropped over 40% thanks to Klinton and congress while demand has doubled. We not supply terrorists with $billions of our own money to attack us. Thanks liberals.
[And in the meantime, most sheeple complain and watch American Idol.]
We are blind sheep led by blind sheep and our empire is dying while we do nothing to stop the politicians of America from destroying our Constitutional Bill of Rights.
Yet for 30 years all we hear are the same slogans from the politicians. “Ride the bus, change your light bulbs, turn down your thermostat, made do with less, raise windfall profit taxes, investigate big oil”. At what point are the American people going to wake up to the fact the Democrat politicians are saying the exact same things in 2008 that they were saying to us in 1978?
It wasn’t too long ago that I tried to make a case for voting for McCain as “the lesser of two evils”. I got in many arguments in FR on that subject. But after reading what many thoughtful people posted in opposition to me, I finally came around to their way of thinking and I now believe that you can’t vote for a RINO and still be a conservative.
If you give money to a RINO, if you vote for a RINO, you are one yourself. You become that which you despise.
And I’ve decided I’m not going to do that. I’m not going to participate in “Being John McCain” out of some fear that the alternative is worse.
Maybe the alternative is worse. But I personally am not going to have any part in aiding or abetting the crime that is RINO.
My understanding is that we were one vote short. If McCain had voted yes, we'd be drilling today.
Hope you are unemployed, because every dime you pay in federal taxes is going to prop up exactly what you are against.
Uh, just kidding about the unemployment.
At what point are the American people going to wake up to the fact the Democrat politicians are saying the exact same things in 2008 that they were saying to us in 1978?At what point are Republican voters going to wake up and see that Republicans are a) gutless wonders afraid to confront the dems on this issue or b) lying hypocrites who actually assist the dems in keeping us from our own oil?
I don't blame the Democrats. Democrats are democrats. They hate capitalism. They hate economic growth. They hate individual liberty. They hate a strong and prosperous America. That's just who they are. That's a given.
I blame the Republicans. Who all these years should have known better, should have fought harder, should have WON.
Well we can blame him, but right now, drilling off the coasts is by exectutive order put in by Clinton.
Right now, at this moment, Bush could make that gone with a sweep of a pen.
No one is doing anything.
We are walking this summer.
Does this mean we should all start voting Democrat?
True, he put it in the energy bill but he didn’t fight for it. It wasn’t that important to him. He didn’t make an issue of it. He just let it go, let it slide, didn’t take it to the American people, didn’t say: “America, after 9/11, how can we DARE turn our backs on our own oil and continue to buy so much from our enemies.”
But why would he say that? Since when has any member of the Bush family ever considered the Saudi’s our enemy?
Bush is a strange guy. He can see the threat on a military level respond to it in a brave and courageous way.
But the overall picture eludes him, has always eluded him. Drilling for oil is MUCH more of a national security issue than going into Iraq. (Just as putting up a border fence is.) But Bush refuses to see it that way. Why?
May I answer that rhetorical question?
Or, is what I suggest an oxymoron?
>>Democrat politicians are saying the exact same things in 2008 that they were saying to us in 1978<<
People either can’t, don’t or won’t remember ‘78.
Half of us were stoned anyway.
Think about it. Born 1950 thru 1960 Hippies, born 1960 thru 1970 stoners, 1970 and up, vague memories if at all.
We are screwed.
Does this mean we should all start voting Democrat?I'm not telling "all" to do anything.
I'm just saying what I'm going to do.
I'm going to compile a list of good conservatives running in November all over the country and I'm going to choose who to send money to from that list, based on how much money I have to give, how much of a chance each conservative has, how close each race promises to be, and how conservative each of the people on the list is. Those will be my factors and I'll take it from there.
I will also look at my choices here in NJ and probably won't even bother going to the polls, but I will if there is a decent down-ticket person to vote for. And if I do that, I'll leave the top of the ballot blank.
But no, I have never voted RAT in my life and I never will.
In 1978 we heard all the same things we are hearing out of the Democrats now. "Windfall profit taxes, investigate the oil companies, conserve energy, increase the CAP standards" 30 years later the Democrats are saying the same things in 20078 they were saying in 1978, The whole reason we created the Dept of Energy in 1978 was to purse these green dogmas. Well it 30 years and trillions of dollars in Govt spending later. Where are we from following the Democrat Party's siren song on Energy Policy?
The reason we are wholly dependent on the variances of the International Oil Market, instead of being one of the nations profiting by them, is because, for “environmental” reasons, we have spent the last 30 years as a matter of Govt policy, doing everything to restrict domestic energy production to in order to push silly “conservation” schemes
To blame the speculators for speculating in a market made so ultra profitable for them by stupid US Govt polices is to blame the cart for being pulled by the horse.
WE, the people of the USA via the agency of those idiots we elect and re-elect year after year after year, are to blame not speculators, not the market, not the Fed Reserve and dollar policy.
US for not developing our own resources and instead allowing the usual suspects to sing the siren song that we could have all the “Eco green” Govt polices we felt like but would never have to pay any economic prices for those stupidities.
Ignoring the 90% to bitch about the traitors in the 10% maybe emotional satisfying for Conservatives but it is not going to do anything to produce a rational intellectual, nor political, solution to the problem. Instead it will merely perpetuate the problem
Where is the "Gulf of Texas"? Last I heard, the Gulf of Mexico off the Texas coast wasn't closed to drilling.
But I agree with your sentiments. There is NO, I repeat NO reason NOT drill off the Florida and California coasts. If the "green-all-over" Scandinavians and Brits are satisfied that drilling in the North Sea is safe (and they are), then the same safety techniques are enough to prevent oil releases off California and Florida, where the weather isn't nearly as bad (and yes, that includes hurricanes).
The major source of "oil spills" off California is from natural seepage from offshore oil deposits. Drilling those reservoirs will relieve the pressure and actually prevent those "spills".
But I do believe you should be a lot more angry at the Democrats. Saying that it's okay that they're slimeballs, cause....well.....they're slimeballs, is sort of lame in my opinion. They are the ones who have pushed us into this corner. You should be a lot angrier at them, they deserve your anger the most.
Besides, we should be careful what we wish for. Do we really want to deplete our own reserves in a quest for oil independence, or do we want to let the Saudis deplete theirs? Of course, they won't do so anytime soon, as they have at least a 300 year supply at any foreseeable rate of growth in demand.
Let the dollar firm up and investors start pulling money out of the commodities markets and we'll see this bubble pop, just like the housing bubble popped, and the dot-com bubble popped, and the tulip bubble popped. We've seen this before.
Having said all that, there's nothing wrong with increased supply, but that's not what's causing the current high prices.
I’ve never given the Democrats a penny. I consider them all enemies of America.
I’ve given the RNC a lot of money in the past, as well as Bush and other “Republicans”. I considered them on my side.
So pardon me if my “disappointment” with their “performance” reaches an extremely high level.
I’m feeling very let down, these days, very bitter. So, after doing a bit of bible study I’m going out for some target practice.
More that you know. Plus we just may have that yet. A good friend of mine is a contractor for Exxon Mobile and has been working projects for several years with them. Guess what kind? Pipeline reversals. That’s right, reversals. Pipelines that used to run from the Gulf of Texas to the interior of the U.S. are having their flow direction reversed.
Hope your shooting goes well.
I hear you FRiend!
The latest “Brilliance” from this Leftist Congress and their ridiculous “Energy” (Mostly the lack thereof.) policy recently drafted for a vote, calls for a Windfall Profits tax, cutting tax subsidies for Oil Companies, etc,,, but says NOTHING about cutting the Federal taxes on a gallon of fuel. (18%, which is double the Oil companies profit) The Fed. makes over 400 Billion per year in tax revenue off of that oil. (Which is why we are not hearing much from them about price controls.)
The more we have to pay at the pump, the more loot the Democrats rake in for their Socialist agenda. But, a Windfall Profits Tax will have the opposite effect and the Democrats have complete memory loss as to what that did to Carter in the late ‘70’s, or this country. It pretty much shut this country down and put our economy in reverse.
We had gas lines, rationing, double digit unemployment, double digit interest rates, double digit inflation, a trade deficit that set all records, Detroit auto makers closed half of their factories and millions of people were out of work.
Part of the Federal Budged included emergency unemployment extensions because most States were out of funds to pay them.
It was a full blown depression, but the MSM, still in all of its Marxist glory, protected their exalted leader, Premier Carter and called it a mild recession.
It will happen again. In fact it has already begun. No matter who takes office. And the stupidity of the American Public will blame who ever that is. I think this is the one and only time we actually want the Democrats to win.
They won’t accomplish much of their agenda, they will be too busy trying to cover up the mess and explain why their Socialistic policies have temporarily ruined the Free enterprise system.
WE need to find a real Conservative leader like Reagan again. Any stupidity that the Democrats manage to pass, can be reversed or fixed with enough dedicated and INVOLVED Conservatives again. This should be our most important goal.
Thanks.
Nonsense, the dollar is only down 50%, while oil is up 1200% in the last 10 years. Moreover, the dollar was up 4% in the last 2 weeks while oil was up 15%. Try again.
Finally, another real Conservative with enough honesty and the balls to stand up and say enough is enough! That’s how we make things happen. That’s how we got Reagan.
We need to let the RNC die at the roots like any weed that has taken control of the garden. Then, replant and grow a bountiful crop again.
At the Department of Energy's EIA website, there is this table which goes through 2006:
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There are two factors at work, as I said. One is deflation of the dollar, and the other is speculation in oil futures, and I was referring to recent price increases, not the last 10 years. Read more carefully.
Yep. Gulf of Texas. Why not? Why should we call it the "Gulf of mexico?" Gulf of Texas has a really nice ring to it. The mexicans don't do much with it and besides it just might pizz them off a tad. And if it pizzes off mexico it is probably a good thing.
Actually I was not referring to just the Texas Coast but the entire Gulf area. There is a lot of it that is excluded. After you have seen the entire excluded area, such as in this map, you will be pretty pizzed when you pull up to the pump
We use primaries to try to increase the number of actual conservatives but after that, it's a head-on assault against the RATS. They must be stopped.
I wonder if that is the real reason, or if it is because the Democrats, in their Titanic stupidity and ignorance, actually believe they can prove to the World that their “Alternative Energy” folly can replace oil in mere months.
Having an “R” behind the name does nothing for the “Majority”. This is what has ruined the GOP in the first place!
Look at those East Coast “R’s” for example. They vote with the Democrats on most every opportunity. What good are they?
This is EXACTLY what some of us are trying to get through the thick sculls of these “Republicans” who keep on repeating this insanity.
We cannot clean up this mess by repeating the same behavior!
You couldn't be more wrong. Who would you rather have controlling the bills that come to the floor for debating, the Republicans or the Democrats? I'll take Republicans any day.
Can't you see what has happened with the Ds in control of Congress? You're willing to enable them? There are many very good, conservatives in Congress and any help we can send them is to our benefit.
Here in our state, Iowa, the results of the RATS having control of both houses of the Legislature and the governorship has been absolutely disastrous.
Alaskans support oil development cause they know how the oil companies under predict how much is really there and most have worked up the slope one time or another and seen all the enviromental overkill in place.
THe funny thing is they are drilling like no tomorrow right across the border in Canada, but no way in Alaska; and the caribou;;;; it;s shoot them when you see them. 
Here's a quick summary of U.S. energy production in 2006:
Having a hard time spotting the pie slices for Wind and Solar PV? They are tucked in there between "Hyro" (should be Hydro, of course) and Biomass. Squint real hard. You'll find them.
Welcome to the club. For many years now I've targeted my time and money to specific candidates.
not all of us... but too many.
None of that is true, except the prices are up. The condition of Peak Oil has been achieved. This is Peak Oil. This is what Peak Oil is like.
That’s lookin’ like lunch to me!
People are stupid here. I don’t mean the FReepers just the Greenies down here.
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