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Amusing

Driving America Into The Ground

June 21, 2008 gags

They say all of the greatest civilizations/societies have come to a miserable end. Sometimes I wonder if this country is headed in that direction.

Jeff Jackson ponders the direction that America is taking in this fitting article.

DRIVING AMERICA INTO THE GROUND

Back in college I remember a conversation with another student who was not really a friend but more of an acquaintance. One day we just so happened to be parked next to each other and he was asking me about my beat up ’83 Caprice Classic. He had a much nicer ’94 Lumina which his dad had bought for him two years before and which he was complaining about not running very well. We talked for a few minutes and I happed to ask him what type of oil he was putting in her. That’s when the blank look crossed his face and he asked me, “What do you mean oil?”

“You know, oil – motor oil?” I asked. Well, he didn’t have a clue what I was talking about. “You are changing the oil every few thousand miles right?”

When he said, “no” I knew there was a problem. In the nearly 20,000 miles he had driven this car he had never even thought to change his motor oil because he did not know you were supposed to. A cursory inspection of the vehicle also revealed that his tires were nearly bald, that his muffler was hanging on by a literal thread, and several other problems with his vehicle daddy had bought him.

Other than putting gas in the tank when the needle approached E, he had no idea how to actually take care of his car. It was, honestly, amazing that it still ran.

Another young lady that I had known, who also had a car bought for her by her parents, came running into my dorm room a few years later screaming something along the lines of, “You know about cars right? Mine’s leaking something and can you please, please come take a look!”

Panicked and scared, she did not really have a rational thought running through her brain so I went out to the parking lot with her. It was a hot autumn day and right in front of her car, which she had left stopped halfway out of the parking space after seeing a puddle while leaving, was the liquid. I bent down dipped my finger in it and seeing that it was clear and odorless I asked her if she had been running her air conditioning.

She said that she had because she had just driven a hundred miles back to school from home in the sweltering heat. I stood up and told her that it was just condensate from the AC and quickly tried to explain how condensation from her cooling system had simply dripped on the ground. I also explained to her that she could tell this by looking at the color of the fluid and that she had nothing to worry about.

Well, she was certainly relieved and merrily went on her way.

A month later however she was back in my dorm room crying because her car had stopped running. Once again I went back out with her to see if we could find the problem. As we approached where her car was parked, I noticed a trail of brown liquid spotted on the pavement and it led right to where she was parked. I looked under the car, reached under, put my finger in a pool of liquid and pulled it back out with what was clearly motor oil on the tip.

Showing it to her, I informed her that she had an oil leak and by the looks of things probably has dropped all of her oil and seized her engine. “What do you mean?” she cried indignantly. “You told me that it was just water from my air conditioner!”

“No,” I said, “I told you that the clear liquid was water from your AC. What color is this?”

She sheepishly said brown and I told her that brown was engine oil. Of course she hadn’t checked the color. She only saw the fluid and assumed it was condensate again. So she wound up getting her car towed and at significant cost had it fixed.

Now, what does this trip down memory lane to my college years have to do with anything? It’s a correlation to how people act in America these days. We’ve been given this country by our parents. But do we really now how it runs, how to keep it running or how to maintain it? Or are we just putting gas in the tank and assuming that it will always work properly? Are we ignoring what people tell us and carrying on in blissful ignorance?

Sadly many Americans are. Eventually if we don’t start taking care of America, supporting individual liberty, reigning in government spending on unconstitutional projects and holding our elected officials who are at the wheel accountable, the country will break so badly that no amount of money will fix it.

American is careening towards a cliff. Our brakes are out, our tires are bald and out of alignment and the worst thing is our air conditioning is broken. But we have a full tank of gas and we seem content to be along for the ride.

Amusing

Confidence in Congress at an All Time Low

June 21, 2008 gags

Confidence in Congress is the lowest in US history, yet the Democrats are confident the America people will give them a majority in both the House and the Senate in November. What’s wrong with this picture?

The more Congressional Democrats oppose drilling in our country, the lower their poll numbers go.

Confidence in Congress: Lowest Ever for Any U.S. Institution

Gallup’s annual update on confidence in institutions finds just 12% of Americans expressing confidence in Congress, the lowest of the 16 institutions tested this year, and the worst rating Gallup has measured for any institution in the 35-year history of this question.

We have the best politicians money can buy. ~ Mark Twain

Amusing

10 Reasons To Blame Democrats For Soaring Gasoline Prices

June 17, 2008 gags

All ‘10 reasons’ are valid. The simple truth is this: We can bring oil/gas prices down by drilling all of our own oil. The justification for going back to President Bush’s 2001 energy package and passing it has never been more obvious.

I believe members of Congress are in for “A Crude Awakening” this coming November. Either that or the second American Revolution is around the corner.

Top 10 reasons to blame Democrats for soaring gasoline prices

This started out as an attempt to create a light and humorous, Letterman-esque Top 10 list. But the items on the list, and the drain Americans are seeing in their pocketbooks because of Democrats’ actions (sometimes inaction) are just too tragic for that.

10) ANWR If Bill Clinton had signed into law the Republican Congress’s 1995 bill to allow drilling of ANWR instead of vetoing it, ANWR could be producing a million barrels of (non-Opec) oil a day–5% of the nation’s consumption. Although speaking in another context, even Democrat Senator Charles Schumer, no proponent of ANWR drilling, admits that “one million barrels per day,” would cause the price of gasoline to fall “50 cents a gallon almost immediately,” according to a recent George Will column.

9) Coastal Drilling (i.e., not in my backyard) Democrats have consistently fought efforts to drill off the U.S. coast, as evidenced by Florida Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s preotestation against a failed 2005 bill: “Not only does this legislation dismantle the bi-partisan ban on offshore drilling, but it provides a financial incentive for states to do so.”
A financial incentive? With the Chinese now slant drilling for oil just 50 miles off the Florida coast, wouldn’t that have been a good thing?

8) Insistence on alternative fuels One of the first acts of the new Democrat-controlled congress in 2007 was an energy bill that “calls for a huge increase in the use of ethanol as a motor fuel and requires new appliance efficiency standards.” By focusing on alternative fuels such as ethanol, and not more drilling, Democrats have added to the cost of food, worsening starvation problems around the word and increasing inflationary pressures in the U.S., including prices at the pump.

7) Nuclear power Even the French, who sometimes seem to lack the backbone to stand up for anything other than soft cheese, faced down their environmentalists over the need for nuclear power. France now generates 79% of its electricity from nuclear plants, mitigating the need for imported oil. The French have so much cheap energy that France has become the world’s largest exporter of electric power. They have plans in place to build more reactors, including an experimental fusion reactor.

The last nuclear reactor built in the United States, according to the US Dept of Energy, was the “River Bend” plant in Louisiana. Its construction began in March of 1977.

Need I say more?

6) Coal “The liquid hydrocarbon fuel available from American coal reserves exceeds the crude oil reserves of the entire world,” writes Dr. Arthur Robinson in an article on humanevents.com. The U.S. has approximately one-fourth of the world’s known, proven coal reserves. Coal would be a proven, and increasingly clean, source of electric power and–at current prices–a liquified fuel that would reduce our dependence on foreign oil. Yet Dems and their enviro friends have fought, and continue to fight, both coal-mining and coal plants.

5) Refinery capacity “High oil prices are still being propped up by a shortage of refinery capacity and there is little sign of the bottleneck easing until 2010,” according to Peak Oil News. And, while voters in South Dakota have approved zoning for what could become the first new oil refinery in the United States in 30 years, the Dems’ environmentalist constituency vows to oppose it, just like environmentalists opposed the floodgates that could have saved New Orleans from Hurricane Katrina.

4) Reduced competition With consolidation in the oil industry, has come reduced competition. Remember, most of the major oil company mergers — Shell-Texaco, BP-Amoco, Exxon-Mobil, BP-ARCO, and Chevron-Texaco — happened on Clinton’s watch. The number of oil refiners dropped from 28 to 19 companies during Clinton’s two terms.

3) The Global Warming Myth At a Group of 8 meeting this week, host and Japanese Economy, Trade and Industry Minister Akira Amari “described the issues of climate change and energy as two sides of the same coin and proposed united solutions … to address both issues simultaneously”. As a result of Global Warming hysteria, the Al Gore-negotiated Kyoto Protocol created a worldwide market in carbon-emissions trading. Both 2005 –the year that trading was initiated–and this year –when the trading expanded dramatically — saw substantial and unexpected price spikes in the cost of oil, leading us to reason Number…

2) Speculation “Given the unchanged equilibrium in global oil supply and demand over recent months amid the explosive rise in oil futures prices … it is more likely that as much as 60% of the today oil price is pure speculation,” writes F. William Engdahl, an Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization. According to a June 2006 US Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations report, US energy futures historically “were traded exclusively on regulated exchanges within the United States… The trading of energy commodities by large firms on OTC electronic exchanges was exempted from (federal) oversight by a provision inserted at the behest of Enron and other large energy traders into the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000.” The bill was signed into law by Bill Clinton, in one of his last acts in office.

1) Defeat of President Bush’s 2001 energy package According to the BBC, “Key points of Bush(‘s 2001) plan were to:

-Promote new oil and gas drilling

-Build new nuclear plants

-Improve electricity grid and build new pipelines -$10bn in tax breaks to promote energy efficiency and alternative fuels

A New York Times article, dated May 18, 2001, explained:

“President Bush began an intensive effort today to sell his plan for developing new sources of energy to Congress and the American people, arguing that the country had a future of ‘energy abundance if it could break free of the traditional antagonism between energy producers and environmental advocates.

Mr. Bush’s plea for a new dialogue came as his administration published the report of an energy task force containing scores of specific proposals… for finding new sources of power and encouraging a range of new energy technologies.”

[The Bush plan] “mentions about a dozen areas including land-use restrictions in the Rockies, lease stipulations on offshore areas attractive to oil companies, the vetting of locations for nuclear plants, environmental reviews to upgrade power plants and refineries that could be streamlined or eliminated to help industry find more oil and gas and produce more electricity and gasoline.”

The article went on to quote some rather prescient words from the President, “this great country could face a darker future, a future that is, unfortunately, being previewed in rising prices at the gas pump and rolling blackouts in the great state of California” if his plan was not adopted in 2001.

The Times account continued:

“Mr. Bush talked not only of blackouts but of blackmail, raising the specter of a future in which the United States is increasingly vulnerable to foreign oil suppliers…Mr. Bush was praised by many groups for laying out a long-term energy policy. His report contained 105 initiatives…”

Just as President Bush’s predictions have been born out, the article quoted from that most sage of Democrats, former President Jimmy Carter:

“World supplies are adequate and reasonably stable, price fluctuations are cyclical, reserves are plentiful,” he (Carter) argued. Mr. Carter said “exaggerated claims seem designed to promote some long-frustrated ambitions of the oil industry at the expense of environmental quality.”

But, as a later Times article notes, “the president’s ambitious policy quickly became a casualty of energy politics and, notably, harsh criticism from Democrats enraged by the way the White House had created the plan.”

In other words, Democrats refused the President’s plea to “break free of the traditional antagonism between energy producers and environmental advocates.”

Remember that the next time you pull up to the pump … or the voter’s booth.

Amusing

Barrel For A Bushel: One Way To Cut The Cost Of Oil

June 17, 2008 gags

I am proposing a new program. I call it the “Barrel for a Bushel Program”.

Here is how it works:

OPEC nations sell oil for over $140.00 a barrel. OPEC nations buy U.S. grain at $7.00 a bushel. The solution to offset the high cost of oil is to sell U.S. grain to OPEC nations for $140.00 a bushel. If they can’t buy it, well, they can try eating their oil. It’s all about supply and demand.

Amusing

Congressional Stupidity Is Destroying America

June 16, 2008 gags

This article hits the nail square on the head. By the way… isn’t “Congressional Stupidity” redundant?

To blame anyone other than environmentalists and corruption in Congress for this energy crisis and alternative fuel fiasco is dishonorable and totally off base. We have untapped energy resources which could easily make the U.S. independent.

The solution to our energy crises is simple. Utilize our own energy-producing fossil resources.

Energy Crisis, Congressional Stupidity, And Election 2008

People are angry. Global oil prices have doubled over the past year, sending fuel prices skyrocketing. Diesel fuel, in particular, is outrageously high, putting the squeeze on the farming and trucking industries, and driving the price of nearly everything upward, especially the cost of food. Truckers have even taken to “demonstrating” in the streets of the capitol city.

The elected head of the nation’s government seems unable to do much of anything to alleviate the problem. But appearing as though he’s doing something is better than appearing as though he’s doing nothing, so he schedules a trip to Saudi Arabia for several “high level talks” with oil producers.

Does this sound like a description of the series of events that led up to President Bush’s trip to the Middle East a month ago? You remember that trip, don’t you? It gave us those hideous photos of our current U.S. President holding hands with Saudi King Abdullah, along with the headline “Saudi‘s Rebuff Bush.”

Well, the passage above could very well be used

to describe what was going on here at home back in February, March and April of this year. But it is actually a description of what’s been going on in London the past few weeks, as British Prime Minister Gordon Brown announced plans last Friday to pay his own special visit to “the King” later this month, on June 22nd.

Same problem, essentially the same description, but a different country. And here’s another difference between the two stories: in the United States, we have the resources to get ourselves out of our dilemma – – at least partially – – in the short-run.

It’s no mystery that the United States is home to its own substantial oil and gas resources. It is also true that oil corporations, themselves, are NOT the villains behind the skyrocketing fuel prices. The problem is, without a doubt, the United States Congress.

Currently, it is a violation of federal law to search for oil in the Pacific Ocean, in the Gulf of Mexico, in the Atlantic Ocean, and in Alaska. Similarly, it is against the law to search for oil shale in the continental United States. Congress has the power to change federal laws that restrict such energy exploration and development, but has chosen not to do this.

And if “Congress” is to blame for these harmful laws, that means that there is plenty of blame to go around among Republicans and Democrats alike. Republicans controlled the Congress for nearly twelve of the last thirteen and a half years, and during that time the stupidity on energy policy remained intact.

Yet for the past seventeen months, Democrats have been in control of Congress. And what has been the response from our nation’s legislative body regarding our most recent energy crisis? For one, the Democrats introduced legislation that would raise taxes on oil companies. Acting as if “companies” actually pay taxes (rather than passing along the additional costs to their customers), the Democrats chose to play – – to borrow a term from my friend and mentor Hugh Hewitt – – a game of “Sesame Street economics.”

Were the Democrats’ corporate tax increase to actually become law, it would do nothing to help expand our nation’s energy resources, and would, indeed, drive our energy costs further upward. But never mind the need for real solutions – – if you’re in Congress and you’re a Democrat, its good to look like you’re being “tough” on oil companies.

And on the point of “looking tough,” Congressional Democrats have also conducted several “investigations” and “hearings” as of late, to determine if oil companies have been doing anything illegal or unscrupulous so as to drive-up the prices of their products. One of my favorite moments from the “big oil hearings” was when Congressman Ed Markey of Massachusetts demanded to know why the Exxon Mobil Corporation was not investing at least 10% of its profits into the development of alternative, “renewable” energy sources. That’s like demanding to know why the cattle ranching industry is not investing in the development of a soy-based meat substitute product – – it was silly and illogical, yet it was an opportunity for Mr. Markey to look and sound tough in the face of big oil.

So while Congressional Democrats continue to try and appear like they‘re “getting tough” on the oil industry, how about if Congressional Republicans really “get tough” on congressional stupidity? Attitudes and tempers at the pump are already starting to get testy, and gasoline is expected to approach five dollars a gallon by the Fourth of July holiday weekend.

There is a huge opportunity to be seized for the Republicans, if they can figure out how to point-out the foolishness and destructiveness of the Democrats’ proposals, and then propose a real solution to the problem, and then make it happen.

But can the Republican Party, at such a time as this, actually rise to the occasion? And what precisely is the message to voters? And who are the spokespersons for this message? Thoughtful answers to these questions could change the outcome of election 2008.