Oil Again

In recent months there have been three problems facing the nation that seem to have most Americans quite upset, if we are to believe the news media. These are, the war in Iraq, the rather severe economic down turn, and closely related… the steady price increase of food and fuel. The Democrats of course blame the Republicans, and through them the President, for all these problems. The Republicans in their turn happily point out that the Democrats control congress, and so far, despite their glowing promises, have failed to do anything about the whole sorry situation. In the meantime we face a national election, wherein both political parties are so busy struggling for position and a favorable press that nothing can get done anyway! The mainstream news media continue their “Oh woe is me, the sky is falling” gloom and doom predictions, Al Bore continues to tout his version of global warming, Hollyweird’s “progressive” celebrities keep blaming America for all of the world’s problems, and the Russians are mad at us again. Naturally, the American people are taking a beating… again. Or maybe I should say “still”?

I don’t really understand just how the various localized wars and ethnic cleansing going on in Africa can be blamed on the US, nor do I understand why an American missile shield designed to protect Europe from the possibility of mid-eastern nuclear armed rockets is considered to be a threat to Russia. Matter of fact, there are a whole lot of things going on in today’s world that really don’t make a lot of sense to me… reckon that’s why I’m not a TV news talking head or carnival fortune teller… I don’t have a functional crystal ball even if I do sound that way on occasion. But I do know that I’m getting highly fed-up with the situation in this country today!

A couple of years ago the Democrats solemnly proclaimed that “the war in Iraq is lost”, and that the United States should immediately run for home. Instead, the President finally sent enough troops to Iraq to accomplish something besides being targets (the “surge”), put some severe pressure on the Iraqi insurgents, and now it appears that we’ve just about won our part of the conflict. ‘Course the Democrats still want us to come running home with our tail between our legs. Senator Obama, who has not yet been elected president, makes a tour through the area, and apparently arranges for massive troop withdrawals. Meanwhile, Senator McCain, who has not yet been elected president, makes a tour through the area, and seems to think everything is just peachy-keen. At the same time, the Iraqi’s just want us to go home, so they can get on with their civil war. I guess the Iraqi’s… and Halliburton… figure we’ve run out of free money.

The high price of foreign crude oil is raising hob with what’s left of our economy, driving up the prices of everything from gasoline to food to real estate, and in the meantime driving down the stock market. The democratic leadership insists that off-shore drilling won’t have any noticeable effect for fifteen or twenty years, but when the President calls for lifting the drilling ban, the price of oil immediately drops about twenty dollars a barrel! (Retail prices “should” drop slightly in a few more weeks I understand.) Yet the “leader” of the democrats, Senator and Presidential hopeful Barack Obama, says that 'Reversing 30 years of failed energy policies will merely prolong the failed energy policies of 30 years.' Humm… I really don’t understand how correcting a failed policy will prolong it.

At the same time, the enviro-nuts wax hysterical, congressmen jockey for position, and naturally nothing gets accomplished! Ms. Pelosi screams hysterically that we’re supposed to exhaust “all other options” before we start drilling. Other options? I do wish she’d explain how we’re supposed to run the trucks that deliver food all over this country on wind power. How is a farmer supposed to run his combine on solar power? Am I supposed to heat my house on tidal energy? Gravity might power my old pick-up on a downhill run, but after all, most of Idaho seems to be built on an up-hill slope! “Conserving” fuel might aid the cities a bit (and perhaps reduce their smog problem), but are those of us who live in rural areas supposed to depend on electric golf carts for long distance transportation? A hydrogen economy infrastructure is twenty to fifty years down the line. Sorry lady, there ain’t no options available that will have any effect on our national economy in the here and now, except greatly increased domestic oil production! And we should have been doing just that some twenty or more years ago.

Sixty years ago America’s domestic oil fueled nearly the entire Allied cause during WW II. Am I now to believe that, with our known huge oil reserves, we can’t fuel our own economy today!? We’ve got more oil in the ground than the Saudi’s do! We have scadzillions of cubic metres of methane buried in the seafloor off our coasts, which the environmentalists naturally won’t let us access! Or we can shift our electrical generating capacity from oil burning to coal, and we can build a lot of nuclear power plants. But all that is time consuming, and just how much more time do we have? Our national economy is energy (oil) driven, and is presently on the verge of disaster. In the 1940’s American know-how went from a rather vague theory to a functional A-Bomb in four years. In the 1960’s American know-how progressed from rockets that had a habit of blowing up, to American astronauts walking on the Moon, in just nine years. Now the democrats would have me believe that American know-how can’t drill a few holes in the ground in less than fifteen years!?

Hand in glove with the radical environmentalists, our congressional leadership gives every indication of calmly sitting on their hands while waiting for our economy to totally collapse, and for the United States of America to go the way of the Soviet Union. Why? We desperately need oil, but congress refuses to repeal the drilling ban. Why? Congress refuses to do anything about our borders, and literally welcomes a flood of illegal immigrants, while sending tens of thousands of American jobs overseas via NAFTA. Why? China appears to be dumping their contaminated industrial products on us, and congress can’t seem to get a handle on the problem. Why? Not everybody in this country makes a hundred thousand dollars a year, leaving most of us having to float a bank loan if we go to the gas station or grocery store, and congress does nothing. Why? “Poor folks” are loosing their homes in record numbers, leaving those properties to be snapped up by the rich for nearly nothing, and congress merely eases things for the rich! Why? Advanced medical care is beyond the economic reach of most Americans, and congress continues to do nothing about it. Why? Sen. Obama wants to send eight hundred and forty five BILLION of our dollars overseas to temporarily ease things for the world’s poor, while we have plenty of poor or homeless folks of our own to worry about. And congress is seriously considering doing just that! Why? The environmentalists have managed to tie a good many of our rural economies in knots, while congress merely looks on and smiles benignly. Why? The President of the United States advocates “spying” on American citizens in the name of national security, and congress, who is constitutionally responsible for protecting our citizens from just such executive excess, hands him a blank check! Why? The President solemnly asks for, and Congress happily hands him, the “Patriot Act” that quite effectively suspends our Constitution and the Bill of Rights! Why? Why doesn’t Congress do something to protect and defend our nation and our citizens for a change? After all, we don’t pay their ridiculously high salaries so they can run around the world pretending to be Very Important Personage’s rather than common American citizens in whom we’ve temporarily entrusted an important job.

I think it’s well past time for the American people to rear up on their hind legs “in justifiable fury”, and demand some straight answers from our elected representatives! If we don’t get those answers, then I’d say it’s time for a voter’s rebellion to “Throw ‘da bums out”, and elect an entirely new bunch of bums!