Its Too Soon To Lower Prices At The Pump

Related article from Heritage Foundation's The Foundry

The Senate on Tuesday blocked an amendment to pending transportation legislation that would have mandated a huge expansion of offshore oil-and-gas leasing, opened the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to drilling and approved construction of the Keystone XL oil sands pipeline.
Sen. Pat Roberts’s (R-Kan.) amendment, which failed 41-57, would have also extended several energy efficiency and renewable fuels tax incentives and extend a pay freeze for federal workers, among other provisions.
“My amendment addresses the rising cost of gasoline,” said Roberts in support of his amendment prior to the vote. “It cuts red tape, opens up more federal land for oil-and-gas exploration and drilling, it would approve the Keystone XL pipeline and extend renewable tax provisions.”

H/T ConservativeByte

It needs to be done closer to October, so we don't get to comfortable between now and November. My goodness, what would happen if Americans had inexpensive gasoline through the whole summer. They might have the means to actually travel around and gather with friends and discuss issues and, "GASP Heaven forfend", actually drive cars to DC to demonstrate their displeasure with the current administration.

A Message From the Folks Who Live There

“It’s About Jobs”:
Ice Road Trucker & Fellow Alaskans Testify on Need to Unlock American Energy in Alaska

Posted [on SotH website] by Katie Boyd on September 21, 2011

Opening up resource-rich areas of Alaska to new energy exploration and production will create jobs, ensure the continued flow of energy to the lower 48 states, and promote America’s energy security. That was the message shared by Alaskans today at a House Natural Resources Committee hearing on the government’s refusal to unlock more American energy production in that state. Boosting American energy production to address high gas prices and help create jobs has been a key plank of the GOP’s plan for jobs and the focus of our American Energy Initiative. Here are some of the highlights from today’s hearing:

“Development of ANWR Would in Turn Create Tens of Thousands of Jobs.” Fenton Okomailak Rexford, Tribal Administrator for the Native Village of Kaktovik and a member of the Kaktovik City Council: “[D]evelopment of ANWR would result in thousands of new contracts, all across the U.S., for materials and services. … The additional expenditures related to development of ANWR would in turn create tens of thousands of jobs, many of which could put unemployed Americans back to work in manufacturing facilities, the construction business, and other industries.” (Testimony, 9/21/11)

“Inaction Trumps Common Sense and Legitimate Need” for Jobs. Tim Sharp, Business Manager of the Alaska District Council of Laborers: “We seem to be caught up in contemplating our navel on process, permitting and politics at a time when it is obvious to most that we have oil in Alaska, development would generate thousands of needed jobs, and the leverage and impact the foreign producers could have on us would lessen. Instead, inaction trumps common sense and legitimate need. … I am addressing today the need for political action to offset our dwindling energy reserves in the next five to ten years but equally important the need for jobs today. ” (Testimony, 9/21/11)

Really Hacked or Red Herring?

If his account was hacked, it needs to be investigated. If security was breached, Weiner should be the one out front demanding to know who's responsible. The fact that he is not, and is actually being a real weiner about the subject, tells me there's more to this than just a hacked Twitter account.

This could all just be a planned diversion to keep the conservative bloggers occupied while the really dirty deeds go unnoticed. I can almost hear the phone call..."Tony-boy this is Plouffe. We're gonna need you to take a hit over Memorial weekend to keep those damn right-wing bloggers busy. Make it about sex and college girls; they love going after Democrats for that."

If something seems so stupid as to be ridiculous bordering on asinine, then chances are good its something else entirely.

Congressman says #Weinergate cybersecurity investigation vital in order to ‘ensure our national security’

Duh, Ya THINK???

Florida Republican Rep. Cliff Stearns is demanding an investigation into cybersecurity issues raised by #Weinergate, saying it is vital to “ensure our national security.”

Though New York Democratic Rep. Anthony Weiner remains silent on whether or not he’ll be seeking an investigation into his claims that his Twitter and Facebook accounts were hacked, leading to his Twitter account’s posting of a picture of a man’s erect penis underneath gray boxer-briefs, Stearns told The Daily Caller that the imbroglio raises troubling questions that should be looked into by Congress.
“Although this particular incident is a matter for law enforcement, it clearly indicates that hacking is a serious problem and as Chairman it would be appropriate for the Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee to examine the issue of cybersecurity to protect our privacy and to ensure our national security,” Stearns said in an email to The Daily Caller.

Stearns is the chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, a committee on which Weiner sits.
Neither Weiner nor his spokesman Dave Arnold will say whether or not it is Weiner in the lewd photo, nor will they say if they’re seeking an official FBI or U.S. Capitol police investigation into the alleged hacking.

UPDATE: Weiner responded to Stearns’s call for a cybersecurity investigation by telling Politico he doesn’t “respond to distractions, particularly ones named Cliff Stearns.”

Always Blame the Ones Who Make the Product

Gas wars: The battle lines are drawn for this summer’s gas price blame game. Sen. Richard Blumentahal (D-Conn.) told Face the Nation that Obama should issue subpoenas and convene a grand jury to “uncover the potential wrongdoing” by oil companies. GOPers, meanwhile, are going to pin the blame squarely on Obama’s offshore oil drilling moratorium which has already decreased domestic offshore oil production by 13% this year. The wild card, however, will be Libya. A plurality of Americans blames unrest in the Middle East for high gas pries. If Obama continues to look clueless on Libya, expect these issues to blend together.

Issue subpeonas; drag their asses in front of Congress. Make them confess. Typical marxist drivel. Its those eeeeeevulllll oil companies.

I Hate To Keep Repeating Myself

Not really. Hopefully, if enough people hear it and realize just how independent we COULD become, they'll stand up and demand the Bambi Administration allow drilling.

What Country Is Sitting On The World's Largest Untapped Oil Reserve?

The United States is again, for the second time in less than three years, being reminded of its absurd dependence of foreign sources of energy, most notably, oil. The upheavals in the Middle East have driven up the cost of a barrel of oil into triple digits as it was in 2008. The increasing demands of countries such as China and India and the deliberate devaluation of the dollar by the Federal Reserve and the Obama administration are steadily pushing up oil prices in dollars.
The country's dependence of foreign sources has increased to 52% of the daily requirement as compared to 45% just 15 years ago. Over half of that amount comes from countries that are inherently unstable or ruled by despotic regimes whose interest it is to de-stabilize the United States.

More after the jump

There Is Only One Solution

DRILL BABY DRILL!!!!

How Obama Is Making Gas Prices Higher

Yesterday, for the first time since September 2008, the price of a barrel of crude oil topped $100 on the New York Mercantile Exchange. But while the recent unrest in the Middle East has had some marginal effect on rising prices, the most significant factor has been increased oil demand worldwide. That is why, long before the recent protests even began, analysts were predicting $4 a gallon by this summer and $5 a gallon by 2012. Anyone could have predicted that the recovering world economy, coupled with the continued growth of India and China, was going to push oil prices higher. So if an Administration wanted to keep gas prices down, they could have mitigated increased oil demand by increasing domestic oil production. But that is not what the Obama Administration has done. Instead of increasing domestic oil supplies, the Obama Administration has cut them at every opportunity, and Americans are now suffering because of those choices.

Back in February, when the protests in Egypt were first unfolding, Energy Secretary Steven Chu was asked what the Administration could do to combat rising world oil prices. Chu responded: "The best way America can protect itself against these incidents is to decrease our dependency on foreign oil, in fact to diversify our supply." It is now one month later and the Administration has not updated its talking points. Pressed on gas prices yesterday, White House spokesman Jay Carney said: "We are also, as you have seen over the past two-plus years, very focused on the need precisely to develop other energy sources so that we are not as dependent on foreign oil as we have been in the past." So what are these "other energy sources" the White House has been developing? How does the White House plan to "diversify supply" to reduce gas prices? The answers are corn, wind, sun, and electric cars. And they won't help a bit.

According to Heritage analysts Nick Loris and John Ligon, Obama’s energy policy consists of: increased biofuel production, increased electric vehicle production, and increased renewable power production. These are all terrible public policies. The major source of biomass production, corn-based ethanol, produces less energy per unit volume than gasoline, contributes to food price increases, costs taxpayers $4 billion to produce 2 percent of the total gasoline supply, and has dubious environmental effects. The electric cars the Obama Administration has invested in are prohibitively costly, do not fit the needs of the American consumer, and are also environmentally suspect. The other sources of energy the Obama Administration is subsidizing and promoting—wind and solar—not only make up a minuscule 1 percent of America’s electricity generation but are entirely irrelevant to gasoline supply in the transportation sector.But not only has President Obama failed to diversify our energy supply in any meaningful way; he has actually proactively moved to cut our own domestic energy supplies:

First, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar canceled 77 leases for oil and gas drilling in Utah in his first month in office. According to the U.S. Department of the Interior and the Bureau of Land Management, there are 800 billion barrels (a moderate estimate) of recoverable oil from oil shale in the Green River Formation, which goes through Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming. This is three times greater than the proven oil reserves of Saudi Arabia.

Then last summer, President Obama needlessly instituted not one but two outright drilling bans in the Gulf of Mexico. The Energy Information Administration estimates that President Obama’s offshore drilling ban will cut domestic offshore oil production by 13 percent this year.

Last fall, Interior Secretary Salazar announced that the eastern Gulf of Mexico, the Atlantic coast, and the Pacific coast will not be developed, effectively banning drilling in those areas for the next seven years. At least 19 billion barrels of easily recoverable oil lie off the currently restricted Pacific and Atlantic coasts and the eastern Gulf of Mexico.

President Obama has also failed to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, where an estimated 10 billion barrels of oil lie beneath a few thousand acres that can be accessed with minimal environmental impact. Those 10 billion barrels are equivalent to 16 years’ worth of imports from Saudi Arabia at the current rate.

"The Obama Administration is repeating the mistakes of President Jimmy Carter’s failed energy policies, which marred his term and stigmatized the 1970s. They are leading us straight into another national energy disaster," Steve Forbes warned in Politico yesterday. And what would that "energy disaster" cost the American people? According to The Heritage Foundation’s Center for Data Analysis, an increase in the per-barrel price of imported crude oil by $10 in the first quarter of 2011 and by $20 in the second quarter would reduce gross domestic product by $20 billion, drop potential employment by nearly 100,000 jobs, and increase gasoline prices by 18 cents per gallon in 2011 alone.Yesterday, Carney said that "the president is extremely aware of the impact that a spike in oil prices can have on gasoline prices and therefore on the wallets and pocketbooks of average Americans."

If that is true, and if Energy Secretary Chu really has recanted his belief that Americans ought to be paying $8 a gallon for gas, then the President must completely reverse his entire energy policy so far by allowing Americans to develop our own natural resources, issuing permits in a timely manner, and removing regulatory and litigation delays on energy projects.

West/Palin 2012

No I haven't lost what's left of my mind. I haven't been eating the funny-looking mushrooms growing in my basement. This is serious.

LTCOL Allen West (R) FL-22, gave the keynote speech last night at CPAC. I managed to catch the first 5-7 minutes.

If you remember, LTCOL West was the officer who used fear-tatics to extract information from a Taliban terrorist and saved lives. He immediately notified his command and he was discharged. The Army's loss is Florida's, and now OUR, gain.

LTCOL West has presence of mind, a grasp of fundemental conservative values, and the cajones to run this country. He is National Security personalized. Coupled with Sarah Palin, who has Domestic Energy credentials, I believe we could actually return this country to a position of independence and security.

They Never Give Away Anything

PYLE: Oil drilling head fake
Obama didn't open land for energy production, he closed it

Nearly 30 years ago, Congress imposed a moratorium on the safe and environmentally sound practice of offshore oil and natural-gas exploration. In the early 1990s, President George H.W. Bush imposed a similar ban in the form of an executive order. And while this ban was in place for decades, many in Congress and the public at large had no idea that the United States was the only country in the industrialized world purposely embargoing its own energy resources.

Fast-forward to the summer of 2008: Oil was $150 a barrel, the price at the pump exceeded $4 a gallon, and the American people - of all political stripes - were genuinely outraged. In response, the Democrat-controlled Congress and President George W. Bush retired both the congressional and executive bans on offshore oil and natural-gas production.

That move effectively opened nearly the entire Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) for responsible energy production.

Now fast-forward to March 2010: President Obama announced that he, for the first time, is opening new lands in the OCS for energy exploration. You might be scratching your head at this point, because many energy-industry leaders, newspaper reporters, cable news pundits, lawmakers and politicos applauded the president's announcement as some major policy breakthrough and the White House's willingness to compromise on energy policy. However, the announcement, along with the president's sudden eagerness to trade his proposed national energy tax for increased oil and natural-gas drilling, is nothing more than political theater.

Read the rest at the Washington Times.

Always be wary when your opponent seems to be conceding anything. Its usually a good indicator they have something else planned.

No Fence-No Security

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano announced yesterday the Obama administration will delay the virtual U.S.-Mexico border fence.

Hey hey ho ho Napolitano has to go.