Domestic Policy: July 2008 Archives

The only thing standing between Americans and lower gas prices is an intransigent leadership in Congress that won't allow a vote on legislation to increase American energy independence by increasing American energy production. Check out our web ad nearby and then help us do something about it.

According to the Wall Street Journal, "at least 65% of America's undiscovered, recoverable oil, and 40% of its natural gas, is hostage to the Congressional drilling moratorium." American energy exploration would not only reduce prices immediately, but would also create thousands of good-paying jobs.

Here at Freedom's Watch, we've been taking the fight to those obstructing American energy independence. We are in the midst of a multi-week effort of phone calls into about 30 congressional districts urging members to support legislation to allow for more energy exploration right here in America.

Over the July 4th holiday period, we ran radio ads in 16 districts educating constituents about votes against domestic energy exploration these members have taken, and urging them to contact their representative.

These efforts are working; we are really getting under their skin! Liberal congressional leaders are so angry and scared of us, they've launched a new web page devoted to attacking us and our supporters - folks like you.

The Sierra Club - which says "We're better off without cheap gas" - is also responding to what we're doing, running radio ads supporting five Members of Congress who are blocking energy independence.

We have much more in store for the liberal obstructionists - but we can't do it without your help! TV, radio, and phones cost a great deal to produce and get on the air. A contribution from you will help us defray the cost of these types of projects and allow us to run additional ads to ensure that there will be an honest debate on the issues conservatives care about.

So please, help us by taking a moment right now to make a contribution to Freedom's Watch.

Thank you for your ongoing support!

Sincerely,

Joe Eule
Chief of Staff
Freedom's Watch

It's a miracle!  It's a miracle!  Who would have ever imagined that taking substantive steps to increase the domestic supply of petroleum would favorably affect the dollar and the stock market by causing the price of oil to decline?:

Overseas stock markets were higher and Wall Street index futures pointed to a solid open as the cost of oil retreated further and traders turned a bit more hopeful about the economy.

Light sweet crude oil for September delivery was down $2.17 at US$126.25 per barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange, after dropping more than $3 in the previous session as Hurricane Dolly looked likely to avoid oil installations in the Gulf of Mexico.

Crude now is down by more than $20 a barrel from its July 11 peak above $147 - a surge that had raised worries that inflation would cripple the economy.

And all because President Bush lifted the Executive ban on off-shore drilling - the one imposed by his father, ironically enough.  He made the government slightly smaller, and the economy benefits as a direct result.  Amazin', ain't it?

Dubya's order also opened up federal "on-shore" lands for energy exploration, one of the biggest examples of which is the 800 billion barrels of crude locked within oil shale deposits in the mountain West:

In remarks last month calling on Congress to expand domestic energy production, President Bush noted the “extraordinary potential” of oil shale resources on public lands in the West. According to the U.S. Geological Survey, the U.S. holds more than half of the world’s oil shale resources.

The largest known deposits of oil shale are located in a 16,000-square mile area in the Green River formation in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming. Shale formations in that area hold the equivalent of up to 800 billion barrels of recoverable oil. Federal lands comprise 72% of the total surface of oil shale acreage in the Green River formation.

By Ensign Ed's envelope arithmetic, that's over a century's worth of oil at our present rate of domestic consumption.  Plenty of time to transition to nuclear fission, develop nuclear fusion, and work on the technology to make the collection and storage of solar power as practical and economical as fossil fuels.  And in the near-term, to enable us to stop subsidizing the war being waged against ourselves and our allies by the criminal aggressor regimes in Iran and Venezuela (and the plutocrats of Saudi Arabia, if they're a burr under your saddle).

It's such a no-brainer that Republicans are actually coming out of hiding to jump on the bandwagon before it recedes out of range:

Four-dollar-a-gallon gas has done something that few Republicans thought possible just a few months ago: given them hope.

United behind a renewed push for offshore oil drilling, Republican members of Congress and the party’s presumptive presidential nominee, Senator John McCain, think they have found their best political issue of the 2008 campaign.

McCain strategists and GOP leaders on Capitol Hill say the issue, which polls suggest Americans favor by healthy margins, lets Republicans demonstrate their plans to address the anger over high gas prices as well as the broader economic distress that many voters feel.

Because most Democrats, including Senator Barack Obama, are opposed to increased drilling, McCain and the GOP have already begun casting their rivals as unconcerned about gas prices and unwilling to wean the country from foreign oil.

This is a level of cluelessness and inflexibility (and complacency) on the majority's part that has to rival the mindset that the GOP lugged into the 2006 midterms.  Regrettably it comes too late in the '08 cycle to encourage more and better candidates to get into competitve races that might have been Republican pickups, but it could end up averting the Donk wipeout that everybody has been expecting.

The thing to look for is whether the minority will flog this issue with the ferocity and ruthlessness success will require in a media atmosphere of deafening, wall-to-wall Obamaphilia.  Especially if oil prices continue to coast downward, and/or if the Dems wise up before it's too late.

If the scared, timid, craven Pachyderms can recognize a wedge issue when they see one, the Donks will really have no excuse if they let it bludgeon them into electoral death.

Because our forefathers were all SO much better off in the primitive, ignorant, filth-and-disease-ridden Stone Age.  And libs have the gall to refer to themselves as "progressives"?

Oh, yes, indeedy.  Fat Albert himself waddled out to give yet another sermon yesterday on the virtues of an energyless existence.  Guess he wants to have the Internet all to himself:

Just as John F. Kennedy set his sights on the moon, Al Gore is challenging the nation to produce every kilowatt of electricity through wind, sun and other Earth-friendly energy sources within ten years, an audacious goal he hopes the next president will embrace.

Sounds like the Lexington Project without the new nuclear plants and drilling.  The Goreacle is even using the same Apollo parallel that John Sith McCain is, and it's even stupider for the former than it is the latter, and for the same reason: the 1960s lunar exploration program had one huge advantage this energy independences falderal never will: visibility.  Everybody could SEE the launches, everybody could turn on their televisions and SEE Neil Armstrong take that "giant leap".  That PR boon kept the public at large engaged and interested and even captivated.  Show me how miles and miles of windmills and artificial fumeroles are going to raise gooseflesh and get kids to say, "Whoa, dude, that is so COOL!"  Besides, let pump prices drop fifty cents a gallon or so for whatever reason and the public arousal over the energy issue will evaporate like spittle in Death Valley.

But that's just the selling difficulties.  The real impracticality with this dangerous scheme is, well, it just won't work.  The largest economy on the planet cannot possibly fufill all its energy needs from wind and steam.  Solar has the potential, but we are decades away at best from the technology that will enable sunbeams to be both collected and stored in sufficient energy density levels to be viable.

J-Ger brings up two inconvenient truths:

As of 2006, renewables produced six percent of U.S. electricity. So all we have to do is switch over about ninety-four percent of our current energy sources. Quite a few other environmentalists found Gore's goal unrealistic, with one comparing it to "challenging your two year old to finish college by the time she is twelve."....

Wind, solar, and geothermal are not manners of propelling a vehicle, or at least not for the purposes of a typical American. (Try going to the grocery store in one of those solar cars.) Nor will they be anytime soon. And Dionne's last sentence hints at why we can't switch to electric cars — an expensive transition whenever it's done — too quickly: producing more electric cars before increasing the supply of electricity generation sources would make electricity more expensive.

There are reasons why fossil fuels have been and remain our predominant energy source: accessibility, efficiency, and versatility.  We can get at them economically, they produce a higher "bang for the buck," and can be used to both generate sufficient quantities of power and propel our transporation modes (trains, planes, and automobiles).  Remember the PR problems I mentioned?  Try selling Jimmy Carter's permanent energy austerity to the public, putting on an extra sweater in lieu of having a thermostat to turn up, and making their fifteen mile commutes to work in the rain on their bicycles and see how far Al's Ten Year Challenge gets.

Or the price tag, for that matter:

The Alliance for Climate Protection, a bipartisan group that [Gore] chairs, estimates the cost of transforming the nation to so-called clean electricity sources at $1.5 trillion to $3 trillion over 30 years in public and private money.

Wouldn't that be $3 trillion (always take the upper estimate on these things, and then double it at minimum) over TEN years?  That IS his "challenge," after all.  Heck, that makes Barack Hussein Obama's proposed $150 billion for the same purpose over the same span look downright miserly.  Anybody, particularly Fat Albert, know where that coin is coming from given the permanent depression his Big Idea would impose on the American economy?  Particularly at the same time that Social Security and Medicare are collapsing?

Ya gotta admire his audacity, I suppose, in throwing out this old socialist chestnut:

"This is an investment that will pay itself back many times over," Gore said. "It's an expensive investment but not compared to the rising cost of continuing to invest in fossil fuels."

No, this reckless, foolhardy boondoggle will cost many times his lowball estimate and return N-O-T-H-I-N-G except poverty and misery.  I can't picture a more effective means of destroying the United States of America as a world power than the Gore Plan, short of an enemy detonating a huge nuclear warhead over our country and EMP-ing our electrical grid and everything attached to it into ashes.  At least that'd be quick, and we wouldn't have to subsidize it.

In the mean time, true progress is being made with the hearts and minds the once & never king presumes to win over.

The [IBD] poll of 920 adults taken last week shows that 73% think “fuel prices at the pump” are a bigger problem for the country than climate change, the new term for global warming. Only 23% say climate change is more important.

The sentiment prevails across the board — among men and women, old and young, rich and poor, and Republicans, independents and Democrats, two-thirds of whom say gas prices are more important.

Support for offshore drilling and oil shale development is also broad-based, with the former favored by 64% of respondents and the latter by 65%.

The results suggest President Bush has strong public support as he puts pressure on Congress to back more exploration for oil.

That public support is corroborated by the 1.3 million DRILL NOW! petition signatures dropped on Nancy Pelosi's and Harry Reid's doorstep by Newt Gingrich's American Solutions organization:

The clarion call from GOP pols for renewed exploration is, astonishingly, growing in volume as well.  And the Bush Administration has, belatedly, listened.  First by lifting the Executive Order against offshore drilling, and now by releasing nearly four million acres of Alaska land for immediate drilling that could yield as many as 3.7 billion barrels of oil starting in as little as two years.  Which had the effect of knocking ten bucks off the oil barrelhead price, the biggest such drop in over twenty years.

Just imagine what could be accomplished if the Democrat Politburo got with the program.  Infuriatingly, imagining is all we can do on that front:

Despite polls showing Americans in favor of drilling more oil from America's huge untapped supplies, Pelosi won't allow it. She just wants to empty our Strategic Petroleum Reserve for a short-term fix to get through Election Day.

It's an irresponsible suggestion, signaling not only an ignorance of how the economy works but also a willingness to place the nation at risk in the case of emergency.

Last Tuesday, Pelosi sent a letter to President Bush urging him to release a "small portion" of the nation's 706 million barrels of strategic-reserve oil to bring down prices. Regardless of how one feels about whether reserves should be held at all, two big problems stand out with Pelosi's tiny demand.

One, she's proposing a misappropriation of the reserves. The U.S. oil stockpile is a 58-day cushion for emergencies that today are all possible. If Israel attacks Iran, for example, and prices double again. Or if Hugo Chavez cuts off his supplies, as he threatened to do as recently as Sunday.

The reserve is there to cushion the blow of a market disruption; it's not an open-market mechanism to manipulate prices for political ends.

Two, Pelosi has finally admitted that supply matters, something that contrasts with her entire legislative record. We count fourteen energy actions to suppress supply on her Web site just since 2005.

She has blocked efforts to open Alaska to drilling, denounced fossil fuels, blamed oil companies for high gasoline prices, voted for biotech boondoggles and condemned speculators.

Foolishness she and her bottom-feeders could get away with in the good old days when pump prices were a third or even half of what they are now.  Now, however, that foolisness is producing its inevitable bitter fruit, and the public - long harangeued and hornswaggled on the morality and virtue of "going green" on just about everything - is rediscovering the efficacies of black gold.  You know the old saying: you never know how much you love something until it's gone.

And yet Democrats are expected to win big this November.  Which is why it is up to every Republican on every ballot this fall to flog the Donks on energy without mercy.

The American electorate will not vote for a return to the Stone Age if they're made to understand that that is where Al Gore, Nancy Pelosi, and the Democrats are leading us.  If not, if 'Pubbies chicken out once again, then the ex-veep's quip that, "I have never seen an opportunity for the country like the one that's emerging now," will prove tragically and inescapably true.

But not, of course, for them:

Don't look now, Fat Albert, but one gaggle of your disciples has gone Judas on you:

The American Physical Society, an organization representing nearly 50,000 physicists, has reversed its stance on climate change and is now proclaiming that many of its members disbelieve in human-induced global warming.  The APS is also sponsoring public debate on the validity of global warming science.  The leadership of the society had previously called the evidence for global warming “incontrovertible.” …

The APS is opening its debate with the publication of a paper by Lord Monckton of Brenchley, which concludes that climate sensitivity — the rate of temperature change a given amount of greenhouse gas will cause — has been grossly overstated by IPCC modeling.   A low sensitivity implies additional atmospheric CO2 will have little effect on global climate.

Larry Gould, Professor of Physics at the University of Hartford and Chairman of the New England Section of the APS, called Monckton’s paper an “expose of the IPCC that details numerous exaggerations and “extensive errors”

In an email to DailyTech, Monckton says, “I was dismayed to discover that the IPCC’s 2001 and 2007 reports did not devote chapters to the central ‘climate sensitivity’ question, and did not explain in proper, systematic detail the methods by which they evaluated it. When I began to investigate, it seemed that the IPCC was deliberately concealing and obscuring its method.”

Gee, I can't imagine why, can you?  Perhaps because they had a vested personal and political interest in pushing the conclusion they wanted, as opposed to whatever the TRUTH actually was?

Read this mea culpa from an Australian climatologist and tell me if the past decade of pseudo-scientific climate change horsebleep didn't fairly reek of a stacked deck:

When I started that job in 1999 the evidence that carbon emissions caused global warming seemed pretty good: CO2 is a greenhouse gas, the old ice core data, no other suspects.

The evidence was not conclusive, but why wait until we were certain when it appeared we needed to act quickly? Soon government and the scientific community were working together and lots of science research jobs were created. We scientists had political support, the ear of government, big budgets, and we felt fairly important and useful (well, I did anyway). It was great. We were working to save the planet.

But since 1999 new evidence has seriously weakened the case that carbon emissions are the main cause of global warming, and by 2007 the evidence was pretty conclusive that carbon played only a minor role and was not the main cause of the recent global warming. As Lord Keynes famously said, “When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?”

Well, True Believers like the Goreacle stick their fingers in their ears and shout "LA LA LA LA, I CAN'T HEAR YOU, LA LA LA LA!!!!!" at the top of their lungs, then double down on their hoax and proclaim it all the shriller and louder.  The global warming scare was never about evidence, never about facts, and always about bilking the American people out of their liberty and their prosperity and herding us into a Third World lifestyle overseen by corrupt, banana-republican despots, who would requisition our eternal gratitude for saving us from a "climate catastrophe" that was never going to come.

Meanwhile, these Gorebotian heretics have stumbled onto the REAL culprit of a different - which is to say, REAL - climate change trend:

The paper points out that the warming seen on Earth during the period under question matched the warming seen on other planets in the solar system, a point repeatedly made by skeptics over the last few years.  Mars, Jupiter, Pluto, and one of Neptune’s moons experienced the same climate shift at the same time, and Monckton assigns the blame not to SUVs or belching smokestacks, but to the only energy source all have in common: the sun.  Solar activity during the past seventy years, Monckton states, exceeded what had been seen for 11,000 years, which led to the warming activity here on Earth and elsewhere in the system....

[A]s David Evans points out, the “greenhouse” model should have produced an atmospheric hot spot — which no one has ever found, despite years of looking.  Despite ever-increasing production of carbon, the last seven years have produced a cooling trend.  And more recent data shows that carbon increases at the end of warming cycles, not at the beginning, which demolishes the cause-and-effect assumptions for climate-change advocates.

Our planet is COOLING, gentlebeings, not warming.  So get out there and put those smokestacks on overdrive, rev your SUVs uncontrollably, and stock up on palletloads of the musical fruit.  If Sol is entering a period of reduced activity and output, we're going to need all the greenhouse gases we can belch.

If the Republicans ever regain control of the U.S. Senate in his lifetime, they will have no excuse for not electing South Carolina's Jim DeMint as Majority Leader.  Here's another reason why (via HA):

Facts are stubborn things when they're allowed to matter.  Particularly when it comes to the source of oil spillage into the planet's oceans.  Sixty-three percent of it - five eighths - occurs naturally.  Given that, how can man-made oil spills be considered "unnatural" or environmentally injurious?  How is it that the seas of Earth were not despoiled from the time of the beginning?  Sounds like "Gaia" has a means of dealing with that little problem.

Numbers are difficult things to overcome when placed in their proper context and perspective.  Perhaps the greenstremists could argue that the drilling portion of that graph - a measly single percent - would be higher if unfettered drilling had been allowed over the last generation, but it's difficult to see the proportions changing very much.  Indeed, tanker spills accounting for 4% seen in light of our imported oil percentage rising to its current 70% suggests that greater domestic exploration would, at worst, take a greater percentage from the tanker slice of the graph.  Given technological advances since the 1970s, which have led to vast and proven improvements in drilling safety, it's likely that that combined five percent would actually go down.  And it could go down even more from the development of oil shale deposits and other land-based sources that would negate any need for water-borne transport.

Hysterical environmentalist obstructionism is, in short, obsolete.  Just like the rest of their rancid, malevolently brain-dead ideology.  And yet majority Democrats continue to sit on twiddle their thumbs:

The accompanying message from Freedom's Watch keeps the "DRILL NOW!" drums a-beating:

It's now been two years since House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told Americans that Democrats had a commonsense solution to high gas prices. Average price per gallon when Democrats took control of Congress? $2.32. Now, as the price of gas reaches another record high of $4.11 per gallon (a 77% increase in the last two years!), Americans are growing tired of Congressional leaders twiddling their thumbs while drivers shell out more and more of their income at the pumps.

Senator Barack Obama would've preferred a more "gradual adjustment" in fuel prices. Senator Harry Reid believes all fossil fuels are "dirty" and need to be eliminated. But what these liberal leaders aren't offering is a solution to skyrocketing fuel prices while alternative sources of energy can be developed - and their hand-wringing is having a devastating effect on the American economy.

The liberal 'plan' for alleviating fuel costs seems to be nothing more than twiddling their thumbs while Americans continue to suffer. Sign the petition urging Congressional leaders to stop twiddling their thumbs and take action to lower high fuel prices.

The term "liberal leaders" is an oxymoron.  True leaders are honorable, and have the best interests of those they lead at heart.  Democrats are rulers, not leaders, and see "Us, The People" as fodder, a source of revenue to be taxed, a pool of raw material to be kept ignorant and afraid until they need us to be angry and swell with pride.  To them, we are pawns, our best interests irrelevant to their relentless pursuit of absolute power.

Whether led by Barack Hussein Obama or Hillary Rodham Clinton, the Democrats will lead America to economic ruin, with the runaway energy costs their environmental extremism have misbegotten fueling the decline.

Which makes this story such a striking contrast:

There are two prohibitions on offshore drilling, one imposed by Congress and another by executive order signed by former President Bush in 1990. The current president, trying to ease market tensions and boost supply, called last month for Congress to lift its prohibition before he did so himself.

But [WH spokesman Dana] Perino said Bush no longer wants to wait. She pinned blame on the leaders of the Democratic Congress, noting that no action has been taken on this issue…

Bush says offshore drilling could yield up to 18 billion barrels of oil over time, although it would take years for production to start.

I agree with Michelle Malkin and her protege - why, after all this time, all their Bushophobia, all their vicious partisan rancor, would the President passively defer to congressional Democrats to act first on something on which he KNEW they never would?  John Sith McCain can't take immediate action other than to promise to DRILL NOW!, but Dubya sure as heck can.

This is the same "New Tone"/"reaching out"/"bipartisan" drivel that got his once-courageous attempt at entitlements reform eradicated three years ago.  If the DisLoyalists hadn't been even more numbskulled than their boogeyman last year, it would have cost us victory in Iraq.  Now, with a domestic wedge issue of bibical proportions falling into the GOP's lap like overripe fruit, how could GDub STILL defer to the Dems first instead of acting "unilaterally" to shove it straight up their collectivist ass?

I suppose the miracle is that he acted unilaterally at all.  And whaddaya know, the day after Bush lifts the anti-drilling Executive Order, oil prices drop $9 a barrel.

Just watch, that'll be one of the articles of impeachment for the President's Senate trial this Christmas....

Over at Michelle Malkin's site, she has a chart that tracks gas prices while the GOP controlled Congress, and since the Democrats have controlled Congress. Check it out. Here's what Crazy Nancy has to say about it:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) 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.”

The ignorance this woman displays every time she opens her mouth is breathtaking. No wonder Congress' approval ratings are in the single digits.

JASmius adds: Perhaps Speakerette Funbags would care to elaborate on just exactly how valiant attempts to expand domestic supplies of energy and petroleum refining capacity increase the price of gasoline while doing everything possible to de-energize the American economy while the rest of the world gobbles up what's left of known sources has the opposite effect.

I kid.  The Nora Desmond understudy can't even count the number of shoes in her closet.  She and her party are trapped on this issue, the piper is coming to collect, and all she has left is, "I'm rubber, you're glue, everything you say bounces off of me and sticks to you!"

It's panic, gentles.  Panic, pure and simple.

Are congressional Republicans taking notes?

From Rasmussen:

The percentage of voters who give Congress good or excellent ratings has fallen to single digits for the first time in Rasmussen Reports tracking history. This month, just 9% say Congress is doing a good or excellent job. Most voters (52%) say Congress is doing a poor job, which ties the record high in that dubious category.

Maybe Crazy Nancy and Dingy Harry should finally unveil their big plans to lower the price of gasoline. That should give them a bump...or not.

JASmius adds: Highly unlikely.  Even though aggregate congressional approval ratings are buried lower than Bill Clinton's conscience, that same Rasmussen survey indicates the Donks nevertheless enjoy a twelve-point lead in the generic ballot.  Which, in practice, means about as much as the institutional approval number - IOW, absolutely zippo.  The latter is a cliche, and the former reflects polling bias and party identification more than actual likely voter intent.

The Dems know this, which is precisely why they have decided to duck the energy tempest and hope it blows over:

Democrats in Congress promised to make energy policy a high priority when they returned after the Independence Day break.  Instead, they have quietly scrubbed the schedule of any votes on their energy bill, afraid Republicans will make them vote on increased domestic oil production and force them to choose between popular sentiment for drilling and their environmentalist allies.

And why else have they gone into this rope-a-dope?

Before the break, Democrats heralded two bills that supposedly showed their leadership on energy: an anti-speculator measure and a “use it or lose it” bill that forced oil companies to drill on federal leases — whether or not they had found oil yet — or lose the leases immediately.  They attacked Republicans who opposed both bills as oil-company lackeys, but the truth is that neither bill produces a single drop of oil to solve the supply crisis. [emphases added]

And that, in the estimation of the Donk Politburo, appears to matter enough in PR terms to be sufficient deterrent against further anti-energy mischief-making for the time being, leaving the field open to (sigh) the Republican minority.  Better get the tall grass ready, 'cause there's yet another elephant stampede a-comin', right?

Not necessarily:

GOP senators believe that a number of moderate Democrats would be open to legislation that balances increased energy exploration with conservation. If they’re right, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) could lose their grip on energy policy, and the Republicans could score a major coup on the #1 issue on the minds of voters.

At least five Senate Democrats support more domestic oil and gas exploration, and McConnell is sweetening the deal to make the sale to other moderates: The Kentucky Republican is pushing a package of incentives to boost conservation as well as a measure creating stricter enforcement of commodities markets in exchange for more offshore oil and gas drilling.

I find the notions of boosting "conservation" and expanding regulatory control over commodities markets to be repugnant.  On the other hand, we ARE in the minority, and one of the plethora of reasons why is that we didn't muster the nads to push harder for drilling in a heckuva lot more areas than just ANWR when we did have power.  This dangling compromise offers the Dems most of what they claim to want in exchange for a sea change in the direction of American energy policy that alone can eventually solve, or at least ease, this energy "crisis".

One can see why the Dems want to deep-six McConnell's proposal.  It strips them naked and plops them smack in the middle of the national stage as the champions of runaway energy costs on behalf of the special-est (and most extreme) of special interests.  The Spockian adage all Trekkers know by heart is NOT "the needs of the few outweigh the needs of the many," after all.  That's the last thing False Messiah and Nora Desmond and Barney Fife need as the 2008 campaign nears the home stretch.

However, their brain-dead greenstremist fundamentalism may have taken the matter out of their hands, if the Politico piece's reference to the emergence an "energy gang of 14" is accurate.  How ironic would THAT be?  The same dynamic that destroyed the late GOP congressional regime arising to deal the same fate - or at least a 1998-esque one (i.e. failing to make the massive gains they expected) - to its despicable successor, in equivalently self-inflicted fashion.  As Big Sexy used to say, that's just "too sweeeeeeet!"

If Senator McConnell can flog this "rebellion" long enough, I would expect the Dems to cut their losses and grab the best compromise deal they can.  If Congress really is as unpopular as Rasmussen is indicating, they can't take the chance that their unresponsiveness to public demands for expanded domestic energy exploration will focus that unpopularity upon them.

Or, if gas prices drop back below four bucks a gallon, the issue'll go away long enough to get past the election, and they'll pretend it never happened - a sound strategy in our Short Attention Span Theater culture, and the outcome they're clearly banking on.

All the more reason for the GOP to make hay while the sun shines, even if it's all ultimately futile.  Might not make much difference in this go-round, but it can lay the foundation for 2010 and beyond.

Assuming, you know, that the public doesn't endorse a plebescite disbanding Congress and empowering President Hussein to rule by decree.  It'd give a whole new meaning to the phrase "Democratic Underground."

Thank you for joining more than 1.2 million of your fellow Americans in signing the "Drill Here, Drill Now, Pay Less" petition.

Congress has heard the message loud and clear, but many Members of Congress are still not listening to the will of the American people. This is why we need your help to declare this July 4th Energy Independence Day!

This week, Congress is on recess for the Fourth of July and will return to Washington, DC on July 7. During their 10-day recess, Members of Congress will be holding townhall meetings, attending parades, and talking with their constituents in their districts.

We encourage you to attend any one of these meetings to ask your Member of Congress if they support the "Drill Here, Drill Now, Pay Less" petition. If possible, bring a video camera along to capture their answer. If you're unable to attend these meetings, be sure to either call or write your Congressman's office instead.

Here are a few more steps you can take to make this July 4th Energy Independence Day:

• Tell 5 friends about the "Drill Here, Drill Now, Pay Less" petition
• Call your local talk radio show about your Representative's position on the "Drill Here, Drill Now, Pay Less" petition
• Write a letter to the editor about your Representative's position on the "Drill Here, Drill Now, Pay Less" petition
• Download and print this handout to distribute at your townhall meeting or parade

You can find a new YouTube video, sample talking points, letter to the editor, and other action-oriented materials to guide you at www.AmericanSolutions.com/EnergyDay.

This list is by no means exhaustive. In addition to getting your Representative on record, we encourage you to create your own activities surrounding Energy Independence Day. Your Fourth of July parties, BBQ's, and neighborhood gatherings would be great opportunities to talk to your friends and family about the "Drill Here, Drill Now, Pay Less" petition and ask them to sign it at www.AmericanSolutions.com/DrillNow.

Finally, after Energy Independence Day, email us your stories, photos, or videos to drillnow@americansolutions.com so we can highlight all of your hard work.

With your help, this Independence Day we will declare our energy independence. And we give our elected officials this choice:

Either take action to drill here and drill now for American oil or the American people will take action this fall.

Thanks again for joining the more than 1.2 million Americans of the "Drill Here, Drill Now, Pay Less" movement.

Sincerely,

Dave Ryan
Executive Director
American Solutions

P.S. During this Fourth of July recess, remember to ask your Member of Congress if they support exploring for more American energy -- and take your video camera if you have one.

In the lead up to November's general election, Barack Hussein Obama is pretending to inch his way toward the center, and away from the from the far left base that helped him win the Democrat nomination. During a speech in Zanesville, Ohio, BO announced his plans to expand President Bush's faith based programs. Obama spoke of the importance faith based groups have played in his own life and of the role they can play for our country, saying "leaders in both parties have recognized the value of a partnership between the White House and faith based groups":

"Partnership" or hostile takeover?  President Bush envisioned faith-based initiatives as an alternative to government welfare bureaucracies that do nothing but hold the "poor" down, keep them enslaved in dependence upon the federal dole, and breed all kinds of destructive social pathologies the perpetuate the welfare underclass and have for years.  Indeed, the genuine altruism of religious charities - of which the spiritual dimension is an indivisible component, and ultimately the central point - and their much bigger "bang for the buck" were and are the biggest and most effective argument for shifting the manning of the "safety net" to those most genuinely motivated to make it work as, well, God intended.

Messiah has the reversal of this dynamic in mind.  Namely, the secularization and bureaucratic ensnarement of faith-based organizations into the left-wing orbit via the same basic dynamic as the libs' former welfare clientele: dependence upon federal dollars.  The spiritual dimension is to be banished, the materialistic aspect corrupted, and the old Great Society status quo to be restored.

And the marketing slogan for this insidious scheme?  "Reaching out to evangelicals".

As an evangelical myself, I'd be indignant at this insult to the intelligence of myself and the brethren, except that so many of the latter got seduced by Governor Biscuits & Gravy, who may well be offered a prominent "bipartisan" post (Faith Czar?) in a Hussein administration.

We are not to be of this world.  Barack Hussein Obama embodies it.  Some renewed discernment is desperately needed, brothers and sisters, before it's too late.