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Amusing

Nancy Pelosi Calls Drilling in Protected Areas a Hoax

July 10, 2008 gags

I guess a 9% approval rating isn’t low enough for Nancy Pelosi.

She is a perfect example of why Congress no longer represents the American people. They are so isolated in their own worlds of politics, corruption and self-ego, that they don’t see what is going on in this once great country. What the Founding Fathers feared has come to pass: an aristocracy.

All that Botox must have seeped into her brain.

Pelosi: Drilling in protected areas ‘a hoax’

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) on Thursday shut the door on expanding oil and gas drilling beyond areas that have already been approved for energy exploration, drawing a clear distinction from her counterparts in charge of the Senate.

“This call for drilling in areas that are protected is a hoax, it’s an absolute hoax on the part of the Republicans and this administration” Pelosi said at her weekly press conference. “It’s a decoy to punt your attention away from the fact that their policies have produced $4-a-gallon gasoline.”

Pelosi’s stand may put her at odds with a growing number of members of the Democratic Caucus who have been moving toward possible compromises with Republicans on ways to expand domestic energy production.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) on Wednesday told reporters that expanded offshore drilling is not off the table, and that Democrats will take a look at whether states should be able to choose to drill off their coasts. “I’m not knee-jerk-opposed to anything,” Reid said.

Pelosi and other Democratic leaders also unveiled another series of proposals to deal with the energy and gas price crisis, and renewed their calls for immediate drilling on nearly 100 million domestic acres already approved for exploration. They also called for Bush to release oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.

Democrats are renewing their push for energy companies to “use or lose” the lands they already have leased. New proposals include requiring the Bureau of Land Management to speed up the leasing of approved areas; to reconstitute the ban on the export of American oil; and to urge the completion of the Alaskan oil and gas pipelines.

Pelosi and Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) also said committee work is being completed on bills to curtail excessive speculation in the oil commodity markets.

Democrats would not say when these bills would be ready for floor consideration.

Within minutes of the completion of the press conference, House Republican Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) took to the floor to again criticize Democrats for dodging votes on energy bills, charging that Democrats are avoiding votes on the opening up of the Artic National Wildlife Refuge and the OCS.

Hoyer soon followed to retort, saying he and Democratic leaders have for weeks been urging for drilling on approved acres, only to have those efforts blocked by Republicans.

He blamed Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney – the “two oil men in the White House” – and Republicans for setting an energy policy that has driven up gas prices and steered record profits to the energy companies.

Republicans accused the Democrats of playing a political game.

“As every serious person who has studied this issue knows, the proposals that Democrats are producing are shams and hoaxes designed to provide political cover and not to produce more American energy and lower gas prices,” Boehner spokesman Michael Steel said.

Amusing

Nozzle Rage: Getting Hosed at the Gas Pump

July 10, 2008 gags

This is a humorous video from the Zucker brothers that about says it all. I think when Hollywood starts producing videos like this it could mean that $4.00 per gallon may have been the psychological breaking point for Americans.

Pass it on and spread the word. We as Americans need to take a stand and say “Enough is enough”! Drill here, Drill now!

Every American is getting hosed. Each time we fill up our cars, we are putting money into the hands of OPEC – the oil cartel led by Saudi Arabia.

The Saudis and the other countries that make up that monopoly control most of the world’s reserves. Most of them pay just a couple of bucks per barrel to get oil out of the ground.

Yet, OPEC is limiting production and encouraging speculation that is costing us and other consumers hundreds of billions of dollars every year. It amounts to the largest artificially engineered transfer of wealth in history. OPEC is waging economic warfare, and it is bleeding our country dry.

Worse still, some of the oil money the Saudis, Iranians, Venezuelans and other OPEC members get from us is being used to support terrorism. We are literally paying people to try to kill us.

This is clearly a ridiculous – and unsustainable – situation. If not corrected, we are going to bleed out as we underwrite our destruction.

Enter NozzleRage. NozzleRage is a video campaign designed, through viral YouTube and Internet distribution, to make clear what is happening to this country and its drivers. Its goal is to channel the fury most Americans feel into effective action.

The first of a series of 30-second NozzleRage videos features an OPEC gas pump ripping off and then attacking an ordinary American consumer. Conceived, directed and produced by the fabled Hollywood team of David and Jerry Zucker, it directs viewers to the www.NozzleRage.com website where they can register to view upcoming videos and find out what they can do to end our suicidal vulnerability to OPEC’s oil cartel.

Hat Tip: Michelle Malkin

Amusing

What do the Democratic-led Congress and OPEC Have in Common?

July 6, 2008 gags

Yes… Americans are finally starting to connect the dots.

This sums it up pretty well.

Congress = OPEC?

What do the Democratic-led Congress and OPEC have in common? Both sit on vast amounts of oil, and are content to leave it in the ground and let prices soar. Fortunately, Americans are catching on.

New polls show that Americans, far from thinking that we can do nothing, want Congress to drill, and drill some more if necessary, to break the energy crisis.

A Pew Research poll out Wednesday found that 47% say exploring and drilling for more oil and building new power plants should be the top priority for U.S. energy policy, up from 35% in February. And 50% now say they favor drilling in ANWR, up from 42%.

That follows a Rasmussen poll in June showing that 67% of Americans support drilling for more oil, and 64% think it will help bring down the price of energy.

President Bush understands this shift.

“We can help alleviate shortages by drilling for oil and gas in our own country, something I’ve been advocating ever since I’ve been the president,” he said Wednesday. “I’ve been reminding our people that we can do so in environmentally friendly ways. And yet the Congress, the Democratically controlled Congress, now has refused to budge. It makes no sense.”

He’s dead right. In fact, Democrats in Congress for nearly two decades have rejected drilling for more oil, building more refineries or developing more nuclear power. Since 1990, there have been 46 attempts to boost America’s energy supplies. Only Democratic opposition keeps us from having more.

Alaska’s National Wildlife Reserve, for instance, holds 10 billion barrels of oil, enough for 1.5 million barrels of oil a day. That would be a 20% increase in current U.S. oil production. Slam dunk, right?

No. President Clinton refused to OK development of ANWR back in 1995. When President Bush brought it up again in 2002, he couldn’t get Democrats to support it. So no oil.

Likewise, Democrats have refused to drill for our Outer Continental Shelf oil resources, an estimated 89 billion barrels of crude. Nor do they want to disturb the 1 trillion barrels of oil locked underground in shale deposits stretching across the Rocky Mountains.

It isn’t just Congress. In his bid to win the presidency, Barack Obama has flip-flopped on many things, but he stands squarely with Congress’ naysaying Democrats in rejecting more drilling.

Democrats have failed to live up to their promises, and now we hope the American people hold them accountable.

It was January 2007 that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi made her now-infamous “Energy Independence Day” pledge. In it, she vowed to “truly declare our energy independence” by July 4, 2007.

Yet here it is a year later, and, as the Business & Media Institute notes, the price of gasoline has skyrocketed 85% to $4.09 a gallon.

You start to understand that this has been the intent all along. Democrats hate the very stuff — oil — that makes our economy and way of life possible. By doing nothing, they know prices will soar.

Just like Saudi King Abdullah, OPEC’s de facto leader, who this week said Americans must “adapt to” high oil prices, Democrats want you to embrace higher prices — and lower standards of living.

That’s why Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid can call coal and oil a “sickness.” He actually believes it, and thinks your suffering from higher prices is therefore noble. It purges the disease — oil.

Americans today face spiraling costs for food and gasoline thanks to the Democrats’ ideological nearsightedness. Higher energy costs are feeding into higher prices for everything, especially food.

Americans have to let politicians know they can’t get away with ruining our economy, and that Congress’ inaction is intolerable.

If you’d like more energy to fuel our economy and lower prices, we have a suggestion: Call your congressperson and tell him or her you want more energy — or you might vote for someone else. It might be the best expenditure of energy you make this year.

Amusing

Democrat-Controlled Congress May Be Trying to Destroy America with $11 Per Gallon Gasoline

July 5, 2008 gags

This article may have an element of truth to it. It does appear that Liberals want to destroy this nation, and have done everything they can to create an energy crisis.

Let us look at a simple fact. We have our own natural resources, but the socialist left won’t allow us to use them. The leftist keep preaching about how we should invent magical new energy technologies right now, at this moment, while at the same time demand we stop using oil. These fools don’t realize that in the mean time between inventing new energy technologies, it would be wise to develop our own natural resources, then we wouldn’t have to buy foreign oil from gangsters like Hugo Chavez and places like Iran, the number one supporter of terrorism worldwide.

Oil at $300

You would think that this story is right out of science fiction. But the facts appear to be that the US Democrat-controlled Congress intends to destroy the Republican middle class with $11 per gallon gasoline.

The Democrats’ base — wealthy white “limousine liberals”, and very poor people — won’t be harmed, but the families who live in suburbia will be devastated.

The multi-millionaires like billionaire Senators John Kerry & Jay Rockefeller, financial speculator George Soros, filmmaker Michael Moore, and actors George Clooney & Meg Ryan can easily pay for their auto and private jet fuel. Poor people are forced to take public transit.

Here’s the reasoning behind the move.

The so-called “Global Oil Crisis” is an invention of the US liberal ruling class, which has successfully managed to export their disastrous ideas worldwide. Oil supply and demand has been on knife-edge balance for years. With the growth of the newly well off Chinese and Indian car-consuming populations, oil consumption has been rapidly increasing in the developing world even as it has been dropping in the US. No wonder India and China, with nearly half the world’s population, refused to sign on to the Kyoto “global warming” treaty.

Cheap energy — and specifically oil — is what made America the powerhouse of the 20th century. When gasoline was $1 a gallon in the US, it was $2-3 a gallon in high-tax Europe. Low US excise taxes enabled the country to grow and our vast middle class to prosper. Even today, the American consumer is paying $4-$5 per gallon of gasoline while his European counterpart is paying $10-12.

To meet this new energy shortfall, economists would assume that the rational market would increase the supply of oil and other oil-substitute energy supplies. But they would be wrong.

First, US the anti-nuclear lobby got the nuclear power industry banned from building new safe and clean fifth-generation power plants, abandoning the field to countries like France, which runs its super-fast trains on nuclear plants scattered throughout the country. In fact, fully 90% of France’s electricity comes from 59 non-polluting “carbon neutral” nuclear; they also recycle 99% of the spent fuel into new fuel using a breeder reactor at the La Hague chemical complex. We don’t do this either.

Next, the eco-greens got the drilling for new known American oil reserves in the barren wasteland of the Alaska ANWR’s near-coast sites, and along the east and west-coasts of the continental US, and in the Gulf of America. Now China & Venezuela are set to start drilling off the coast of Cuba – but not Exxon or Chevron. They’re forbidden by law.

Then, the construction of new modern and efficient US-based refineries has been halted for 40 years. So there is a perennial shortage of heating fuel in the winter and gasoline in the summer. One hurricane can take out 5% of the nation’s refining capacity for months. A 5% shortfall can now easily cause a $25 price increase.

Meanwhile, the nation’s electricity generators, primarily fuelled by coal-burning plants, were forced to convert to natural-gas, previously mostly used in industry, agriculture and home heating. This has, in turn, driven the price of natural gas through the roof, from $3 per thousand cubic feet to over $11.

Finally, the hundreds of older existing oil fields and pumping derricks were closed and not allowed to re-open due to “environmental concerns”. California alone has scores of older fields just waiting to be re-opened to increase the US oil supply. And these could be re-opened in a matter of months, not years.

But wait, there’s more.

To make matters worse, Congress then mandated using a toxic and polluting chemical — ethanol — inefficiently converted from corn, to help alleviate the oil shortage. Corn farmers promptly sold their commodity to the highest bidder, the ethanol refiners. The price of corn-based foods, like cornflakes – and sugar, chicken, milk, eggs and beef has now shot up.

In the process, a minor supply-demand problem has been artificially legislated into a full-blown crisis. The stock market’s response has been predictable: down, down, down.

The liberal solution, of course, is for Congress to raise taxes, increase the fuel excise tax, and force industry to adapt wacky “carbon credit” schemes to line the pockets of the rich liberals who are capitalizing on the global warming scare by selling newly-invented credits, like Al Gore’s new company is doing. Wrong. This will stress the mostly-Republican middle class even more.

So what is the solution? What’s right for America is wrong for the limousine liberals. It’s simple, really. Unleash the supply-side forces of economics.

Open up domestic oil drilling immediately. Turn back on the older wells now capped off. Fast-track new safe nuclear power plants. Stop creating global food shortages by killing off corn-based Ethanol production. Waive the punitive duty on cheap Brazilian sugar cane ethanol. Plant lots of domestic switchgrass for cleaner & cheaper ethanol manufacture. Begin a crash construction program of 50 new advanced nuclear power plants nationwide. Stop burning up natural gas to generate electricity. Build new clean coal-burning electric power plants nationwide (China is turning one per week for the next 5 years), and construct coal-to-oil conversion plants. The Germans were doing this in WWII. Alternative-energy sources like cheap 4th-generation solar panels will ramp up as their prices continue to fall.

In other words, return to the old policy of cheap domestic energy that has made America the powerhouse (pun intended) that it once was. The US will become oil-independent of our enemies whose treasuries are now overflowing with a flood of newly-printed dollars we’ve been using to pay our oil bills with, and the dollar regain its strength as the world’s reserve currency.

And the irony? All of this can be done now with results beginning in 90 days, and using new super-clean super-efficient and environmentally-friendly technology. The result: oil will drop down to well below $100 per barrel and the economy will once again boom. If France and China and Brazil can do it, why can’t America? Why not indeed?

Oil sells for $145 per barrel mostly because of artificially-created supply-side shortages. A small part of its price is also determined by speculators and uncertainty over a future cut-off of oil from the middle east that a war with Iran could cause. Assuming that Iran’s nuclear bomb program is destroyed by Israel this fall — with or without America’s help – look for oil to spike up to $250-300. And 40 years of congressional bumbling will be the cause.

Cartoons

Cartoon Of The Day

July 2, 2008September 9, 2012 gags