This an’ That

Nancy Pelosi decided to send Congress home on a five-week vacation rather than allow a vote on a bill to allow drilling offshore. She feared the House might pass the bill. She was also mindful of the 70%+ of Americans who now want drilling and instructed her Democrat colleagues to tell their constituents they actually favored drilling. Cynical? Or, just politics as usual? Both me thinks.

The Democrats find themselves in a box. After years of opposing looking for oil in likely places and to stay in the good graces of the environmental movement (and keep the cash flowing), they are now facing an electorate pissed off at $4.00 per gallon gasoline. Pelosi and her associates have been spinning a lot of BS to attempt to confuse the issue.
· Drilling won’t give us any oil for ten years.
· The oil companies have plenty of leases to drill on and they are not drilling on them.
· The GOP favors the big bad oil companies and won’t consider alternative fuels or technologies.
· And, the most laughable of all: Nancy wants to “save the planet”.

First of all, I am grateful that God has granted the power to Nancy to save the planet. But, before she tackles the global warming problem, I wish she would use these considerable powers to get rid of Iran’s nukes. They pose a more immediate threat to civilization than global warming, which, if it exists at all, is not likely to trouble us much until the end of the century.

The other Democrat excuses don’t hold much water. If the leases currently held by oil companies had oil, does any sane person believe that at $120-140 per barrel they would not be drilling like crazy? The ten-year excuse is simply smoke. Numerous reports indicate several deposits could come on line quickly. More importantly, some of the speculation in the market would diminish with the prospect of new supplies becoming available. (Note: I believe that the current fallback in oil prices reflects the oil producing countries pulling back from buying oil futures and bidding up prices. I suspect they fear killing the goose that lays the golden egg if prices stay at $140pb.)

Nowhere in the anti-drilling propaganda is there any mention of the $700 billion dollars sent annually to purchase oil from countries unfriendly to the US. “The largest wealth transfer in history” as many have described it. Not a word from Nancy. On second thought, perhaps she should concern herself with saving the US economy before devoting herself to saving the planet. Just a thought.

T. Boone Pickens, famous oilman, has been running expensive ads touting wind power. No one has questioned how big an investment T. Bone has in wind power and if his public relations campaign may be self serving. Studies I have read recently suggest that it would take an investment of several trillion dollars over the next decade to achieve even 20% of the USA’s electricity needs via wind and solar. And, the wind does not always blow, nor does the sun always shine. Backup conventional sources of electricity will need to be in place to cover shortfalls. So, why not just build nuclear plants? No carbon gases and it’s the least expensive solution. It would take solar panels covering roughly the area of New Mexico to generate the power produced from one 4000kw nuclear facility. Nah. Greens don’t like nuclear. Too risky.

Obama has been slipping in the polls since his triumphal visit to Europe and the collective pants-wetting of the MSM. Cooler heads dissected his lofty rhetoric and found a lack of substance in his speeches. Some objected to his presumptive attitude of having already won the Presidency. (Is that the Presidential Seal on the podium there Obie?) Back home he continued to tack to the middle on some issues, a not unusual approach by left-leaning candidates. However, his flip-flopping on critical issues leaves many Americans wondering what he really stands for and what he would actually do as President. This uncertainty, I think, explains his lack of success against what can only be described as a weak and confused McCain campaign. About the only thing of which we can be certain: Taxes under Mr. Obama will go up….. a lot.

I listened to BHO’s Michigan speech on energy. Of course, he proposed massive government spending to help displaced Michigan autoworkers. No surprise there. He’s got to carry Michigan to get elected. His big proposal is to take away ALL of the profits of oil companies and give every family a $1000 gift to offset high energy prices. Demonizing the oil companies has been a traditional approach of the anti-drilling Democrats. Exxon did report record profits for the quarter. However, if you actually look at the numbers you will see that they paid $10.5 billion in taxes and their profits were only 9%. Does Obama suggest we confiscate the entire profit margin of every company that makes a 9% profit? For the record… that would cover just about every major corporation in the US, most of which make substantially more than that. Insanity or socialism? Hmm… same thing.

Obama’s only mention of nuclear was to say we needed to investigate ways to make it safe and to safely store the waste. IOW, forget about it during his administration. More insanity. He did also mention encouraging fuel-efficient cars through subsidies. If inexpensive fuel-efficient cars are available, people will buy them. But first, they will have to run the old gas-guzzler that sits in the driveway into the ground since it is now worthless as a trade in. He also mentioned keeping your tires inflated as an important piece of his plan. Key the laugh track.

“Bush Lied, Thousands Died”: An update. Recently the US quietly shipped 550 tons (I say tons) of yellow cake uranium found in Iraq to Canada. Much has been made of the lack of WMDs in Iraq. If Saddam had no aspirations for nuclear weapons, why the yellow cake? This piece of news was widely ignored, as were previous discoveries of artillery shells filled with chemical weapons. No one seemed particularly concerned that Saddam had previously gassed 5000 Kurds or used chemical weapons on the Iranians during the Iran-Iraq War. Never understood how liberals could claim he didn’t have them when he had previously used them. Nor do I understand the claim the Iraq war was “all about oil”. If we invaded Iraq for the oil, how come it’s now at $130 bucks a barrel? Oh, I get it. We went after Iraq’s oil so there would be a shortage and therefore high prices and Dick Cheney and his pals would all get rich. Gee, sometimes I’m so dumb.