Global Warming Causes Amnesia
Why not? It causes everything else, even including Seinfeld-style shrinkage. How else to explain the strange memory loss amongst Democrats who pummeled President Bush over high energy prices in the last years of his term (when they controlled both houses of Congress) and are now surprised at the “unexpected” (as the MSM would say) pounding the GOP is giving them over high gas prices?
Back in April of 2006, the New York Times, the left’s official house organ, reported, “Democrats Eager to Exploit Anger Over Gas Prices:”
Democrats running for Congress are moving quickly to use the most recent surge in oil and gasoline prices to bash Republicans over energy policy, and more broadly, the direction of the country.
With oil prices hitting a high this week and prices at the pump topping $3 a gallon in many places, Amy Klobuchar, a Democratic Senate candidate in Minnesota, is making the issue the centerpiece of her campaign. Ms. Klobuchar says it “is one of the first things people bring up” at her campaign stops.
To varying degrees, Democrats around the country are following a similar script that touches on economic anxiety and populist resentment against oil companies.
How soon they forget! Nina Totenberg of NPR is now defending Obama from rising gas prices, and claims: “Politicians don’t control this.” This past week at the Washington Free Beacon similarly finds video of Debbie Downer’s “Gassy Rhetoric:”
President Obama and his Democratic allies have responded to rising gas prices by insisting there is little, if anything, the administration can do to bring them down.
Obama told students in Miami on Thursday that there is “no silver bullet” when it comes to lowering gas prices. The White House press secretary told reporters this week there are no “magic solutions.”
But Democrats haven’t always been so consistent in their message. In fact, one prominent Democrat argued in 2005 that President Bush and Republicans were directly to blame for high gas prices.
Democratic National Committee chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D., Fla.), then a freshman member of Congress, complained on the House floor about the prospect of paying “more than three dollars a gallon” for gas “for the foreseeable future, if not forever.”
Based on the current prices here in California, three dollars a gallon is looking pretty good right now.
Next, ABC gets all wee-wee-ed up, as President Obama would say, over Newt Gingrich having a bit of sport with Mr. Obama’s algae obsessions:
On Thursday night, Gingrich mocked the president’s speech in front of an Idaho crowd, by suggesting that he should take a bottle of algae with him and “go around and we can have the Obama solution.”
“And maybe what we ought to do at Newt.org is we ought to get t-shirts that say ‘You choose.’ Gingrich went on to suggest the slogans, ‘You have Newt: Drill here, Drill Now, Pay Less. You have Obama: Have Algae, Pay More, Be Weird.”
Heh, indeed.™ As Victor Davis Hanson adds:
As gas nears $5-a-gallon out west, the president, who has cancelled a key pipeline and frozen federal leases from Alaska to the East Coast, teaches us about American algae potential, in the way he used to emphasize the importance of tire pressure and “tune-ups.” He castigates the opposition for making political hay out of bad news, in the way he routinely did as a senator in compiling the most partisan voting record in the Senate. Energy Secretary Chu cannot and will not say a word about soaring gas prices, since he is on record not so long ago hoping that they might double — that is, get to $8- to 10-a-gallon as they are in Europe. The Energy Department can do almost everything Americans don’t want, but not the single thing they do want.
Jennifer Granholm, the Democrat former governor of Michigan from 2003 through the end of 2010, now hiding out in the witness protection program that is Al Gore’s Current TV, claims that “blaming the president for high gas prices is like blaming Rudy Giuliani for 9/11.” A curious turn of the phrase considering that both President Obama’s former “Green” “Jobs” “Czar” and 35 percent of Granholm’s fellow Democrats likely happen to blame Giuliani for 9/11. And even more curious, as Noel Sheppard writes at Newsbusters, because Granholm regularly attacked President Bush over high gas prices — and stumped for Obama’s energy policy, which promised rising gas prices and bankrupting the coal industry.
As James Bowman of the American Spectator writes on his Website:
Returning to the theme of an earlier post on the supposed stupidity of the electorate in the eyes of the media, I notice that today’s Washington Post has President Obama telling us that there are “no quick fixes” for high gas prices. Likewise “no silver bullet.” It is now ten years since the Senate rejected the request of President Bush and the House of Representatives to drill for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, at least partly on the grounds that, so we were told at the time, it would take ten years for the oil to come on line. So, then. How about a slow fix? How about any fix? The “no quick fix” meme is both true and irrelevant, yet another of the straw men that the rhetorical President is so skilled at building up only to tear down. This is just how he chooses to tell us, in the words of the Post’s helpful gloss that it is “the White House’s belief that gasoline prices are subject to cyclical spikes due to forces largely outside its control, including the rise in Chinese and Indian oil demand.”
Of course, that is itself a straw-man argument. The fact that oil price rises are partly or even “largely” outside our control makes no case at all for inaction on those things that are in our control. The Post, like the President, must think we’re stupid. Indeed, according to the account of the same speech in Politico the latter thinks we are so stupid that we will believe him when he tells us that it is the advocates of drilling who think we are stupid. “The American people aren’t stupid,” he said, because they will understand that Republican pleas to drill for more domestic oil are “a bumper sticker” and “not a strategy to solve our energy challenges.” As David Burge’s iowahawk pointed out in a Tweet, that’s a bit rich coming from the guy who got himself elected on the bumper-sticker slogan of “hope and change.” At least “drill, baby, drill” has a precise and well-understood meaning.
Certainly, Republicans have every right to use the Democrats’ tactics from 2008 against them; jujitsu is what political warfare is all about. Though at Big Journalism, Warner Todd Huston outlines “How Obama Uses False Media Narratives To Advance His Polices.”
Houston writes:
We are talking, of course, about President Obama’s claim that the GOP is “licking their chops” over the bad news of high gas prices. This is the line uttered by the president in his most misleading energy speech delivered in Florida on February 23rd.
In that speech, President Obama claimed that Republicans were happy that gas prices were hurting Americans. Obama intended to show that Republicans didn’t care that America was hurting, happy they could use it as a political tool to hurt the president and his well-meaning policies.
Here is what he said:
“Some politicians, they see this as a political opportunity. I know you’re shocked by that. Last week the lead story in one newspaper said, ‘Gasoline prices are on the rise and Republicans are licking their chops.’ That’s a quote. That was the lead. Licking their chops. Only in politics do people root for bad news. Do they greet bad news so enthusiastically.”
Note how Obama uses the partisan slam, published in “one newspaper” written by a left-wing writer and presents this as fact about how Republicans feel about rising gas prices. Note that Obama didn’t quote any actual Republican saying rising gas prices is a good thing. He quoted one of his own follower’s partisan claims and then assigned that false narrative to his political enemies.
In your college debate class you’d call this a strawman argument. Using the claim of a partisan to represent the enemy’s position is what the rest of us usually call a lie.
This “one newspaper” from which Obama claims to quote is likely the left-leaning website Politico whose February 16th story begins with the line, “Gasoline prices are on the rise, and Republicans are licking their chops.”
It was Politico that said Republicans are “licking their chops,” not any Republicans.
Tellingly, not one of the reports in the news over the ensuing days tried to track down what “one newspaper” Obama was claiming to quote. It almost seems as if the rest of the Old Media assumed he was lying about the quote, but didn’t much care anyway because the slam on Republicans was too good to check.
Finally, Lance Burri suggests a viral meme campaign, albeit using low-res 3d analog technology, rather than on the Internet:
Update: From the Instapundit, Mitch Daniels reminds voters that Obama Administration Wanted Higher Gas Prices:
Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels (R) blamed President Obama for the spike in oil prices, saying the administration had pushed for consumers to pay higher prices at the pump.
“Let’s give the president credit for one domestic policy that works. He wanted higher gas prices and he got them,” said Daniels on Fox News Sunday. “Secretary Chu said $8 are about what they pay in Europe. It would be great. Secretary Salazar said $10 and it still wouldn’t be for drilling in the places where we know there’s an awful lot of domestic production. And so, they have gotten the doubling of gas prices and perhaps worse, it’s a conscious policy of this administration. Maybe the one thing they set out to do and actually accomplished.” he said.
With the full faith and credit of the MSM cheering them on. As the Professor adds, “it’s easier to call for higher gas prices when they’re low. Once they’re high, and people are feeling the pain, it seems kind of idiotic. At least in an election year.” Particularly when they’re dealing with prices such as these every day while driving to work.
More: Found via Jim Geraghty’s Morning Jolt email, a Reuters photo is captioned, “Prices rise above $5 for a gallon of premium gas at a Shell station at Olympic Boulevard and Fairfax Avenue in Los Angeles, California February 21, 2012.”
Related: Obviously, I was kidding in my headline — but apparently not by much: “EPA ‘Stalinizes’ JunkScience.com FOIA request about Gleick.”
Did somebody say al gey? Well, I’m sure we’ve all had our suspicions….what with all the Hollywood types and such he commutes with…
But no! Malicious media innuendo and slander! Why, he’s a straight up guy, a real alpha male!! Stop it!!!
Seriously, did this moron think the average guy or gal driving to work every day would see gas passing $4 a gallon and think, “Oh boy, now alternative energy will be economically competetitive with fossil fuels and I’ll soon be able to buy alternatively-fueled vehicles made by Obama’s cronies and help save the planet from a problem Al Gore imagines?” No, they say “S**t, this stuff USED to cost $3 a gallon when this boob took office, what the hell is going on?” But I guess a hyper-educated idiot “visionary” who’s never had a real job but instead lived off the public teat all his life can’t imagine those kind of silly people actually exist.
I love the title.
“Next, ABC gets all wee-wee-ed up, as President Obama would say, over Newt Gingrich having a bit of sport with Mr. Obama’s algae obsessions.”
I think both Obama and Biden should start running their big cars on algae. Yup, just pump the green stuff into the car and lets see if it goes. And if not, we’ll have a Hertz rent-a-car standying by with real gas in it to help them out. Maybe a nice little sub-compact. That would be nice, wouldn’t it? Seeing the president of the most powerful country in the world driving around in a Prius? I wonder if Michelle Obama will go for it? It’s green, after all. Seems like that’s where we’re headed, folks.
The diametrically opposed takes on gas prices under Bush vs. Obama by Democrats and the leftstream media is not a sign of hypocrisy. That would imply they were principled. No, it is clear evidence, once again, of abject partisanship. I understand the Dems being partisan, but this still raises the question of what kind of leaders talk out both sides of their mouth? As to the media, it confirms that they are partisan hacks, not journalists.
How’s about a crisis? “Americans CANNOT WAIT for gas prices to go back down! We must act NOW!”
Remember..when bailing out yer buddies at taxpayer expense? Oh, wait, I guess the (evil) oil industry is just the right size to fail.
Barry, you’re really cruisin’ for gettin’ unelected in the Fall. I will glady go to DC to personally help throw your sorry a** out of office.
It’s funny though…all the things that the lefties THOUGHT W was doing are actually happening under D’oh-bama and yet, the media sees/hears/speaks no evil. I guess when it comes down to it, I know who I can trust and it’s not them. Or is it that I trust them all too well?
C’mon, now!
In diesel semi’s running biodiesel blends (that is, in every corn state),
algae can build up in those fuel tanks til it’s 5 inches thick. There are special additives to buy to counter this.
See, Obama spoke Troof ta Power about algae!
Take THAT, oil-warmonger-deniers!
Speaking truth to algae?
To paraphrase Marie Antoinette “Let them eat Algae”. Why is Obambi not being laughed off the stage after making such a preposterous suggestion . In the first place producing oil from algae is prohibitively expensive and would most likely use more oil to produce than it produces. Then of course we come to land space , how much land would be needed to house the tanks to grow the algae and how much would it cost the construct said tanks. In this land question of course the Green Nazi President falls in to the same trap as those other dinosaurs of the lefty wet dreams Wind Power and Solar Power both of which USE more fuel and resources in construction, land and maintenance than they produce.
Actually, producing diesel from algae is NOT prohibitively expensive, and does NOT use more in oil to make than it produces. It is more expensive than oil, which is why we still use oil rather than algae based diesel. At some point, it will be cheaper to use algae diesel than oil and as that production is ramped up, the price will fall.
“It’s funny to watch a country that prides itself on its grasp of capitalism fundamentally failing to understand what a global market is, and the impact of supply vs demand.”
Even funnier to watch someone lecture us, then fail himself in the very next paragraph. Yes, we understand supply and demand. We also understand that if we increase supply, ie drill baby drill, then the price goes down. We also understand that if you have a domestic market that requires importing oil, then supplying that domestic market with domestic oil, not only lowers the price (cause supply rises) but also lowers importing. This is where your reasoning falls down. The US doesnt have to impact world demand with its supply. It only has to impact US demand. At that point, the oil that the US does NOT have to import is then sold to the world market.
“If you have a problem with the price of fuel, then step #1 is to use less of it. Most people in most countries understand that. Their governments encourage their car makers to build more efficient cars, and people buy them. But not in america, no siree. They demand that somebody should DO something.”
OR make more of the fuel. Most people in most countries would understand that, also. Their governments do not “encourage” they dictate. But not in America. No siree. They have issues with dictates. Not you, apparently. “They demand someone should do something.” Yes. Something specific. Like produce more oil. You seem to be of the persuasion that objects to drilling because “it takes years to produce”. Which they said 20 years ago. 15 years ago. 10 years ago. 5 years ago. today. Thankfully, you are not in charge. ALthough, I’m sure if you were, the buggy whip industry would be very healthy.
He really IS a snake-oil salesman. “In this little bottle in my hand, lies the cure to all your ills. And it will only cost you one gazillion dollars!” One has to be blind not to see it.
Hey, how about an article about how Obama meets so much criteria for being the you know what…
(coughantichristccough). Ahem.
Oil Crises and Pond Scum
With gasoline and heating oil prices reaching and surpassing $4.00 a gallon and $5.00 and even $6.oo on the near horizon, Obama’s Energy Secretary Steven Chu should be given a nice round of applause for being so insightful in 2008 when he said, “Somehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe.”
We’re not quite there yet but we’re on the Chu trajectory.
Chu’s reasoning, if you can call it that, was that high gas prices would force Americans to buy more fuel efficient cars and move their residences closer to their places of employment.
A typically-liberal approach to social manipulation, Chu’s muddle-headed plan didn’t take into account the future fuel efficient Chevy Volt’s tendency to explode, the added cost of buying hybrids, or the impracticality of most Americans switching jobs during a jobs’ shortage.
Never confuse liberals with reality.
They say their ultimate goal is to end American reliance on foreign oil and toward that end Obama and Company refuse to open up ANWR to drilling, refuse to issue off-shore drilling permits, refuse to approve the Keystone XL pipeline due to environmental fears, loan billions to Mexico to fund offshore drilling off California’s coastline, and ridicules Republican demands to ”drill more.”
All are peculiar inactions unless one considers that Obamians are intent on crippling America and reducing us to the level of a Third World nation, an international adjunct of his pledge to share the wealth.
Perhaps the greatest irony in all this is Secretary Chu’s current concern that high oil prices threaten to stifle America’s and world economies.
Just imagine what will happen when United States’ gas prices reach European levels!
As a Nobel Prize winner, Chu must be correct in all he thinks, no? Then again, Barack Hussein Obama was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize and has been warring ever since.
This president, to whom we are shackled until at least January, 2013, has an enviable knack for interpreting realities . . . (Read more at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=14770.)
It’s funny to watch a country that prides itself on its grasp of capitalism fundamentally failing to understand what a global market is, and the impact of supply vs demand.
High oil prices are a global issue. Oil prices are up, and that drives gas prices. The US does not have the capacity, or even the potential capacity, to make a dent in the market power of the irans, africas and saudi arabias. Increase oil pumping in the US, and you won’t be just producing oil for the US, you’ll be exporting it – just like everyone else. And that’s where the reasoning behind “drill baby drill” falls down. It won’t just be oil for the US market, and there’s not enough of it to offset OPEC’s market power.
If you have a problem with the price of fuel, then step #1 is to use less of it. Most people in most countries understand that. Their governments encourage their car makers to build more efficient cars, and people buy them. But not in america, no siree. They demand that somebody should DO something.
Fail. The United States has more oil than Saudi Arabia and more natural gas than all the world combined.
obama is driving prices higher with every executive order.
I have no idea where you get your information from. No, none of those assertions is accurate.
I see you do NOT keep up on what going on in the world. There are vast amounts of oil reserves in North Dakota. The area is booming, and if you are young and need a job, it’s the place to go. That does not include the area near Calgary, and Edmonton in Canada. Seems like everyone there is in the oil business. Many places in the west also contain shell oil which now can be processed at competitive prices. Mexico has been exploiting oil from the Golf for some time now. Only politics prevents the United States from doing the same. California has oil producing well which are capped. All you have to do is uncap them. So much for the 10 year agurment. Too bad California has a communist retard for a Governor! Pennsylvania has huge amounts of natural gas. Then there is over 200 year’s worth of coal available through out the United States. The only people who can not see are those who refuse.
Producting more oil domestically (“drill baby drill”) increases the supply and that tends to lower the price. It also keeps the money here in the US. North Dakota alone is currently producing over 500,000 barrels of oil a day. That’s half a million barrels added to the world supply of oil. At today’s oil prices, that’s over $55,000,000 a day that is staying in our economy as opposed to being sent overseas, often to countries that don’t like us very much. Even if we export oil or other products, this helps our balance of trade. And that’s just for North Dakota. According to the most recent numbers I can find, Iran’s oil production has dropped to about 2 million barrels a day. That means North Dakota alone is producing 1/4th as much oil each day as Iran.
The Obama Administration’s restrictions on oil drilling on federal land has reduced that production by 100,000 barrels a day. Obama has also restricted offshore drilling. This hurts the economy by forcing us to import more oil. There’s another factor at work as well. Obama’s profligate borrowing and spending is driving down the value of the US dollar. Since international oil prices are based on the US dollar, when the value goes down, the price for oil goes up. This in turn drives up the price of gasoline, diesel, jet fuel and other petroleum products. Those higher prices get passed on through the economy for just about everything we buy.
The key thing someone needs to research about Obama’s pushing algae is this: who are the people behind these algae companies and how much did they donate to the Obama campaign. There’s a strong correlation between campaign contributions to Obama and government loan guarantees for solar and wind alternative energy schemes. I suspect a similar correlation between donations and support for algae.
It’s a little more complicated then that. As soon as you move to tap resources, it affects the future price, which has a ripple effect, coupled with lower demand given artificially high pricing now. The assumption we don’t have resources in NA has already been debunked given new technology/discovery and recovery techniques. I’m not discounting the demand overseas and its impact, but remember the cartel sets the pricing, and if we indeed have 1.4T barrels of recoverable oil in NA, it sorta kinda turns things on its head. Competition has a funny way of effecting price changes.
Have you actually been paying attention in the last, oh, 5 years?
1) North America has ENORMOUS oil reserves, much of recently discovered or recently profitable to extract (due to technological breakthroughs… like better fracking)
2) Right after the Democrats were bashing Bush for high gas prices, Bush opened up certain areas of the US for oil drilling, the price of gas dropped by 60% in what, 6 months?
In short, you are completely, demonstrably wrong. Supply and demand: increase supply, prices go down. Duh.
“Have you actually been paying attention in the last, oh, 5 years?”
Yeah. I have.
“North America has ENORMOUS oil reserves, much of recently discovered or recently profitable to extract (due to technological breakthroughs… like better fracking)”
If you’re talking things like shale oil and tar sands, they’re only economic to produce if gas prices stay high (where “high” means where they are now, or higher – and even then it’s a new field). If your goal is to reduce gas prices, tar sands aren’t going to do that. And fracking is used to extract natural gas, not oil.
“Right after the Democrats were bashing Bush for high gas prices, Bush opened up certain areas of the US for oil drilling, the price of gas dropped by 60% in what, 6 months?”
Due entirely to global events. Those prices had a brief spike, then a dip, and continued on their previous rate of inflation like nothing ever happened. I say again – the US does not produce enough to affect global prices. It does, however, CONSUME enough to affect global prices … not that the US is prepared to do anything on that side of the equation.
“In short, you are completely, demonstrably wrong. Supply and demand: increase supply, prices go down. Duh.”
No, I’m really really not. Just apply some common sense – even if bush’s industry gimmes for the oil producers had any effect on prices, do you really think that in six months they could open up enough new fields and wellheads in the US AND feed that into new production facilities in time to reduce prices to the degree that that they fell in late 2008? No, I believe is the answer you’re looking for.
And notice that I said 2008? Late 2008. The reps’ energy bill was passed in 2005, and gas prices just kept on climbing.
Gas prices fell in 2008 because the world economy tanked. Industries shut down factories, people stopped taking overseas holidays, stopped buying imported goods. That caused the price of oil to fall.
*sigh*
That’s right, stop complaining about your standard of living being lowered you naves. Don’t you think that if you REALLY needed to be warm in the winter or get to your job (those of you lucky enough to have one) our wonderfully smart (and energy hogging) elites would have made that possible? Please just sit down, shut up, and give them your money. It’s the only way to Paradise.
A global market! Supply and Demand!
So increasing the supply does nothing? Aren’t both variables part of the equation?
Increase the supply … in ways beyond the control of those who would use oil production as a geopolitical carrot-and-stick … and prices will go down, even if much of it is exported. Keep in mind that high oil prices today have to do with four letters: I-R-A-N, and their proximity to the gateway for around 20% of global oil supply.
And given that the cost to get domestic oil to our refineries should be less than sucking it from tankers that load up in the Persian Gulf, not as much would be exported as you think. It would be at least a partial move towards energy independence … and would send a message to OPEC and others: we are no longer going to allow ourselves to be held hostage by you.
As for conservation, the problem there is the simplistic view many, including many of our leaders, have regarding what it entails. When the soccer mom drives her SUV loaded with kids vs. half-a-dozen moms driving their own kid to practice, that SAVES not only fuel … but time and productivity of the other five. Yet the SUV is the poster child for energy excess.
Many call for more mass transit … I submit that the flexibility afforded by personal-automobile travel leads to more productivity, by not having to build our lives around train and bus schedules.
That includes productivity and innovation that can lead to the next generations of VIABLE energy sources that won’t be hobbled by being pushed into production before the bugs are worked out … and VIABLE ways to protect the environment.
Progressives need to get past their eco-fundamentalism.
You have it backwards. Producers can charge more when the volume is lower.
When demand is high, sellers compete on price.
Anyone who sells stuff for a living realizes this. I worked in demand planning–you want to move a lot of merchandise? Well, shave the selling price a littlle and there you go.
This is not controversial.
That’s right. The supply/demand relationship is a curve, not a straight line.
I wonder if it ever occurred to the Dims, that it’s a hell of a lot easier to move the jobs out to the burbs, than it is to move the workers into the cities. Since urban areas are the power base of the Dims, they are – in effect – cutting their own political throats. After the central cities have been reduced to smaller, or larger, versions of Detroit, I’m sure they could all run for dogcatcher – oh wait, that’s called Animal Services now.
In any case, the Dims have had the media as their de facto allies for so long they’ve come to take it as a given that the media wouldn’t bring up any embarassing statements they made earlier. The problem is though, that Al Gore went out and invented the internet. Now that stuff NEVER goes away. Often it’s on video, so the public doesn’t hear that you said it but SEES you saying it. The Dims haven’t come to grips with that fact yet. Inside that bubble they live in, they only listen to the friendly voices of like minded media types. It doesn’t seem to occur to them that there are other voices out there.
Golf carts don’t run on algae do they? Maybe Mr President has been in too many water hazards lately.
No siree! In America we have the government mandate absurd CAFE standards forcing car makers to build cars Americans don’t want. The government simultaneously refuses to allow domestic oil production in vast areas with known reserves of crude. It refuses to allow a new pipeline to bring oil in from Canada.
Yes, the oil market is global. But, yes, America certainly has the capacity to “make a dent” in the market power of Iran, etc. The US is the third largest petroleum producer in the world behind Russia and Saudi Arabia. The US produces more than twice as much as Iran, more than Iran and Iraq put together, about as much as all the African nations combined, more than the combination of Canada and Mexico. That’s without coastal production from Florida and the East Coast, with much of Alaska shut in and various other parts of lower 48 off limits.
It seems that a large part of the problem is that the federal govt. has this power in the first place!
Of course they do, especially Obie. If he didn’t think that way, he wouldn’t run for a second term, given what he’s done to us in the past three years.
Everybody knows Bush took the giant lever that controls gas prices with him when he left. He needed it back at the ranch where the pipeline full of Iraqi oil terminates in his pool. Also there is something about natural gas from Afghanistan that never made very much sense, but is surely Evil(tm).
I too have been chucklig over the way the media is carrying water for the Obama administration over rising gas prices. I always thought that high gas prices were the result of that sinister cabal of Bush, Cheney, oil executives and (probably) Halliburton. At least they were from 2004 – 2008 when the shrieks from the usual suspectes (NYT, WaPO, CBS, Media Matters, Daily Kos etc) were deafening. Now all of our betters in the media and academia are pretty relaxed about the whole thing and suddenly have grasped that is this thing called “the market” out there.
Mr. Obama and his cohorts refuse to countenance increased oil and gas drilling in the United States (or even Canad apparantly) because new energy technologies are “just around the corner.” They’re view is that we should tough it out until they are completely perfected. That’s like telling a dying patient with 12 horus to live that we should put off life-saving though painful surgery for a couple of months until we can perform the operation with the new “perfect” instruments that might be available by that time.
If the powers that be can force their will upon you, i.e.: where you live, what you drive, what you eat, your energy allotment… they control you, just like a slave. They control your wealth, your freedom of movement, how much free time (if any) you have after your workday is done.
It was never about the environment, it’s about the riches and societal control, just as it has been for thousands of years.
Even the “no quick fix” canard is a lie. A land-rig drilling to 15Kft can be capped and ready for production in about 6=months depending upon the soil, rock and sand formations. Offshore rigs take longer but drilling off the shallow coast of Cali. presents many fewer challenges than the frozen north and you may have a first production within a year. Directional drilliing means many fewer rigs.
The arguments against drilling are mostly lies or gross distortions and exaggerations of risks.
sky·rock·et[ sk ròkət ]
go up dramatically and quickly: to rise suddenly to a very high level or value, or make something do this ( informal )
Synonyms: rise steeply, hit the roof, go through the ceiling, climb sharply, shoot up, increase rapidly
No shit!
Listen when he talks.
Just because it sounds crazy doesn’t mean he won’t do it!
The argument that opening up leases now would not help todays prices because the oil would not flow for 5-10 yrs is not even true. The people bidding for prices in todays oil futures market (those evil speculators) are smart enough to look not at just todays supply and demand, but that for 5-10 yrs from now as well. If they see sigificant new lands being opened now for drilling, thus promissing more supply 5-10 yrs from now, they will bid prices down accordingly. Unfortunately too many politicians, press, and much of the public, are ignorant of these simple facts of the oil market, thus leading to much mindless demagaguery.
Unfortunately it is not just leftists who are ignorant on this. Bill O’Reilly, a supposed free market conservative, has also been playing the evil oil companies card on his program recently.