This ain't Hell, but you can see it from here

Category: Economy

  • Democrats cave to drilling

    I saw it first at Baldilocks;

    One wonders whether the selection of McCain’s Alaskan pro-drilling running mate and the GOP’s humongous post VP selection, post-convention bounce had any thing to do with this decision.

    And then at Ace;

    Pelosi called the Democrats’ blockage of this bill vital — if we don’t stop this, she said, we may as well just go home.

    It was always bad politics (nevermind awful policy) to oppose this. And yet they thought they could nevertheless afford defying the public on such a key issue.

    Yeah, just imagine, the Democrats left town six weeks ago and and came back to a “suddenly” different debate about energy. No, not really…gas prices were about 15% higher than they are now. So Democrats just packed up and left secure that they had fooled Americans into believing that rising gas prices were the President’s fault. Just six weeks ago, Reid refused to bring an energy bill to the floor of the Senate (The Hill link);

    Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said Monday that he would not allow a vote on an amendment giving states new authority to seek oil off their coasts when he brings a Democratic energy bill to the floor later this month.

    In a sign of escalating tensions, one senior GOP senator called Reid a “chicken” for deciding not to allow amendments on energy production, prompting a Reid spokesman to say that “name calling won’t lower the price of oil and gasoline.”

    Three days later, the International Herald Tribune wrote this;

    “The president of the United States, with gas at $4 a gallon because of his failed energy policies, is now trying to say that is because I couldn’t drill offshore,” Pelosi said in an interview. “That is not the cause, and I am not going to let him get away with it.”

    Her voice carries considerable weight since, as speaker, Pelosi is in a position to prevent a vote on expanded drilling from reaching the floor

    And she and Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the majority leader, appear intent on holding the line against calls to approve drilling in areas now off limits. They mount the counterargument that the oil and gas industry is not aggressively exploring large expanses it has already leased on land and offshore. They also have urged Bush to pour some fuel from national reserves into the commercial supply chain in an effort to lower prices.

    It seems according to today’s AP reports that Reid and Pelosi have come 180 degrees around;

    Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada said he is ready to take up two proposals that would allow limited oil and gas drilling 50 miles off Florida’s Gulf coast and in the Atlantic off four southeastern states as well as a broader Republican drilling bill.

    “We are offering Republicans multiple opportunities to vote for increased drilling,” declared Reid, addressing what has become the biggest energy issue in Congress as well as in the presidential campaign.

    So what could’ve changed in just six short weeks? Well, according to The Hill today;

    A leadership aide said last week that Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-Calif.) adoption of a pro-drilling position was a strategic one designed to bring the party in line with its presidential nominee, Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.), and give vulnerable caucus members political cover heading into the November elections.

    In other words “To Hell with the citizens of this country suffering through the summer with high gas prices…Democrats need votes now.” While Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid were jetting around the country, Americans were paying for their arrogance at the pump. Time to make them pay at the polls in November.

    Crossposted at Eagles Up! Talon

  • Obama on the economy

    The ranks of the unemployed swelled this last month according the Labor Department as reported by the Wall Street Journal;

    The session got off to a sour start following the Labor Department’s release of data showing that the unemployment rate soared 0.4 percentage point to 6.1% in August, the highest since September 2003. The unemployment rate was under 5% as recently as February.

    Of course the Obama campaign seized the moment as a fund raising opportunity and sent me this email;

    We learned just this morning that unemployment jumped to its highest rate in five years, and our economy lost 605,000 jobs this year alone — at a time when John McCain believes that the fundamentals of our economy are “strong.”

    The fundamentals are indeed strong. I didn’t get an email from the Obama campaign when it was announced earlier in the week that durable good orders went up last month – surprising economists. But unemployment is a problem. I’d like the Obama campaign to tell us where the Bush Administration or John McCain have made bad decisions in regards to the economy instead of just blaming them for some nebulous policy that drove us into this.

    Anyone remember Republicans mentioning that a minimum wage increase would cause unemployment last year? The only thing the Democrat-controlled Congress passed in their two-year session was a tax on employers. The minimum wage increase triggered many increases in union wages pegged to the minimum wage and that impacted more than a wage increase on unskilled workers.

    Congress also refuses to budge on accessing our natural resources like oil…the increase in oil prices impacts businesses (the people who hire other people). They have to pay the higher prices because they need the fuel to operate or the goods that the fuel brings them, so the only place they can save money is to cut labor costs.

    So why isn’t the Obama campaign at least giving us a break on domestic oil to improve the unemployment situation? Is this the kind of change we’re in for in an Obama Administration? Is there really no hope? That same email Obama sent me said;

    John McCain and the Republicans had all week to make their case — and they didn’t do it.

    The whole Republican convention went by without offering a single idea about how to improve the lives of ordinary Americans.

    What concrete policy does Obama have to correct unemployment – beyond taxing those of us who haven’t lost our jobs?

  • They’re paying attention now

    In today’s Wall Street Journal, Peggy Noonan, in an opinion piece entitled “They’re paying attention now” explains why John McCain has suddenly surged ahead of Barack Obama in the polls;

    There are many answers, but here I think is an essential one: The American people have begun paying attention.

    Despite the year-and-a-half of the media showing us snippets of Obama from his carefully scripted and directed speeches, Americans really didn’t care – certainly not as much as the rest of us who tear apart every word spoken by any politician.

    (more…)

  • Republicans still holding the floor

    It was news last week, but it’s kind of drifted off of our screen what with the Russian invasion of Georgia and all, but one of our members of TAH, rongkirby, was on the floor of the House this morning. He reports that Republicans are still there every day and that their numbers are increasing. This is from an email he sent me this evening;

    Jonn, maybe a good opportunity to go down to the House and blog from the floor. No electronics or cameras but you can take pencil /paper on the floor. I was down this AM and set in the front. It starts around 11 AM. It was great being there. It is historic being there. I sent this e-mail to Kristinn and GOE.

    Freeper Kburi and I went on the Hill (House gallery and floor) today to support our Congressman that want to drill here, drill now.

    We were told to ask for a Gallery pass from a Congressman’s office and go to the tent where visitors enter the House side of the Capitol. We went to the Gallery, but found out that we could also go to the Republican Cloak Room and a Congressman would let us on the House Floor. What a great experience it was.

    They led off with a prayer and the Pledge of Allegiance. A number of Congressman then spoke for 5 to 10 minutes on a comprehensive energy plan and that the people should get an up or down vote on it. There was much applause.

    Afterward I spoke with Cong. Bill Shuster and Cong. Steve King. Cong. King, a lurker on Free Republic asked me to ask Kristinn to keep this issue up front on FR and please let people know to come to fill the house floor. Let everyone on your e-mail list know. They will keep this issue going. The House floor was close to being half filled.

    So I’m doing my part to keep this issue in your mind. I might steal a couple of hours and head over there myself later in the week to lend my support.

  • The bottom of the barrel

    In WSJ’s Washington Wire, Gerald Seib and Sara Murray quote Hendrik Hertzberg in the New Yorker preaching to the Democrats about how they can fool the American public on domestic drilling who has hit the bottom of the barrel as far as excuses go against drilling;

    The point is easy to understand. We take all the risks. We pay all the costs. But we don’t get all the benefits, such as they are. Once the oil comes out, some time in the far future, it gets sold to whoever’s buying at that day’s price. The impact on price will be spread across the globe—which is why, as even the Bush Administration’s Department of Energy admits, that impact will be “insignificant.”

    It’s a drop in the bucket, and it’s not even our bucket. It’s China’s, India’s, Europe’s—everybody’s. We get a thimbleful. But our wind and our sunlight aren’t going anywhere. Aren’t we better off putting our efforts into encouraging and harnessing them? When we’re thinking long term, when we’re planning for twenty years from now, shouldn’t we be looking to get away from carbon-belching, icecap-melting, coast-destroying oil?

    Yeah, do that, you idiots. Make the discussion about not lowering oil costs because it would benefit some guy riding a Moto-Guzzi in Beijing. More “us vs them” rhetoric from the Left. We’ll continue paying high gas prices and buying lavish palaces and skyscrapers in Dubai because we don’t want to lower the cost of gasoline in Tibet. Cheezum crow, these guys are morons.

    To illustrate his point, he uses tiny Denmark as an example;

    …most of what [Danes] pay [for gas] goes for taxes that have financed an energy policy so effective that Denmark now gets 20 per cent of its electricity from wind (we get one per cent) and zero per cent of its fuel from the Middle East (down from 99 per cent twenty-five years ago). Now the Danes are getting ready to jack up gasoline taxes even more and use the proceeds to cut personal income taxes. They have this crazy idea that they should tax things they want to discourage, like gas guzzling, and ease up on taxing things they want to encourage, like people working.

    I wonder how our founding fathers would like the idea of government influencing the behavior of people with taxes. Hertzberg talks about Denmark like it’s the same size as the United States and has the same GDP. Just like the imbecilic comparisons to socialist Sweden, the truth is in the proportions of the two countries.

    I had a discussion the other day with a workmate who was of the same mind as the rest of intentionally moronic on the Left. I discovered that her problem is that she’d never lived outside of the Beltway and she couldn’t understand why people couldn’t just take the bus or ride a bicycle to work no matter where they live in the country. It was the same when I encountered the MoveOn protesters from trendy Bethesda last week. They have no idea what it’s like in the rest of the country, and they don’t care. They want to make lofty statements about how everyone should be “sacrificing”…when we don’t have to sacrifice. All we have to do is drill and pump oil and burn coal until we find an alternative source.

    If we’re spending double on fuel than we have to spend, that’s R&D money we could be using on developing the new source. And whatever this new source is, they better not make a profit at it or the Left will turn them into the new demons.

  • American Energy Freedom Day

    Republicans are getting set to shut Congress down in preparation for what they’ve dubbed “American Energy Freedom Day”, October 1st when moratoriums expire on drilling our own domestic resources, according to Fox News;

    “The overwhelming majority of Republican Senators have pledged to protect October 1 as American Energy Freedom Day so we can reduce dependence on foreign oil and lower the cost of gas at the pump,” [Senator Jim] DeMint said, according to a release from his office.

    (more…)

  • Nancy Pelosi in the pocket of Big Wind

    I’ve seen those stupid commercials of T. Boone Pickens who wants to put a windmill on my Cobalt or something. He has a small point, but he needs to spend time convincing Ted Kennedy and John Kerry (who won’t let them put windmills in view of their respective mansions) not me.

    Rurik sent me a link to an American Thinker article which links to a Michelle Malkin report that Nancy Pelosi has bought stock in T. Boones Pickens wind scheme. So that’s why Blinky the Speaker won’t have an up-or-down vote on drilling our own domestic resources.

    Any bets on how long the media will ignore this blatant corruption? I’ll take “forever”.

    And I’ll also bet with some digging, you could probably find a whole lot more connections between Democrats and that “alternate, renewable energy source” boondoggle we’ve had dangled in front of us the last forty years.

    I’d rather have a candidate in the pocket of an actual industry than a politician in the pocket of a dream and a hope. The Democrats are selling “futures” on a commodity that doesn’t even exist. Sounds kinda like Enron, doesn’t it?

  • Did anyone else notice?

    Last weekend I had family in town from across the country, and I had to actually buy gas and pay attention to gas prices. But anyway, as soon as Congress ended their session on August First, gas prices plummeted  about 15 cents per gallon.  CNN says the trend has been going on for the last 25 days;

    The national average price for a gallon of regular gas fell to $3.81 from $3.818 a gallon the previous day, motorist group AAA said.

    Gas prices have fallen more than 7% since hitting a record high of $4.114 on July 16, though prices remain more than $1 above year-ago levels.

    Gas prices have eased substantially over the last 3-1/2 weeks following a sustained drop in the price of crude oil, gasoline’s primary ingredient.

    But like I said, it seems that the day Congress ended it’s session it dropped significantly. Maybe if we disbanded Congress it’d drop even more.