Webloggin » Stupidity on Stage: Barack Obama’s Most Recent Energy Speech

Barack Obama showed up in Michigan and spouted the typical idiocy on America’s addiction to the big bad evil oil. Here’s how he started out.

When it comes to our economy, our security, and the very future of our planet, the choices we make in November and over the next few years will shape the next decade, if not the century. And central to all of these major challenges is the question of what we will do about our addiction to foreign oil.

Without a doubt, this addiction is one of the most dangerous and urgent threats this nation has ever faced - from the gas prices that are wiping out your paychecks and straining businesses to the jobs that are disappearing from this state; from the instability and terror bred in the Middle East to the rising oceans and record drought and spreading famine that could engulf our planet.

This is without a doubt one of the stupidest statements I have heard in a long time. The terror spreading in the Middle East is primarily fueled by fundamental Islamic jihad. It is based on an intolerance for other religions and a hatred for our way of life and American culture, not the U.S. addiction to oil. Are we to believe that the the genocide in Darfur or the execution of gays in Iran is linked to our addiction to oil? What about the bus bombings in London or the train explosions in Spain or the attacks on Hindus in India? It’s hard not to call Barack Obama stupid when he says these things.

With regard to record droughts, they are cyclical in nature. You can look at the historical record of just about any area and see both record lows and record highs. Lake Travis in Texas reached record lows in 2007 due to cyclical drought conditions that have repeated over time with some of the most severe drought period occurring in the 1950’s. Lake levels also reached above average highs that very same year. Top that off with the fact that drought records in many cases are very hard to estimate because of poor record keeping and you have politicians and politically motivated scientists cherry picking facts to meet their predetermined narrative.

The Democrats are also pushing hard on global warming myths at a time when more and more scientists are retreating from that ill fated stance. The UK is quickly leading the pack here, from a court ruling requiring that schools hand out a packet correcting the lies in Al Gore’s misleading and lie filled Inconvenient Truth to the latest scientific evidence by German scientists showing that the world is entering a 10 year cooling phase. Of course many scientists are running for face saving global warming cover by saying this is temporary cooling period and that we will have to wait at least a decade before the once immediately dire global warming threat continues along its once unabated path to worldwide demise so they are optimistic that the hysteria can be prodded along regardless of the cooling trend.

Answer me this Einstein. If the current trends in global warming are anthropomorphic in nature how does that explain this current stalling? Could it be that man’s contributions are minimal in terms of effect on climate change and that the earth is experiencing a warming and cooling trend that is every bit as typical as the ones that preceded the industrial revolution not to mention Democrat hysteria?

Worse for Democrats however is the fact that much of the worldwide famine today is a direct result of the idiotic green push to move us toward “environmentally friendly” biofuels. Fuels like ethanol that actually burn dirtier than gasoline in flex fuel vehicles. Some estimates are that food prices increased by about 75% as a result of the once touted lib fuel replacement experiment . Do you think those fields are going to grow food again any time soon?

But I started out saying that Obama and the other dummies in the Democratic party are skipping over some key questions that should be answered about their plan.

Obama said the following in his speech:

There are genuine ways in which we can provide some short-term relief from high gas prices - relief to the mother who’s cutting down on groceries because of gas prices, or the man I met in Pennsylvania who lost his job and can’t even afford to drive around and look for a new one. I believe we should immediately give every working family in America a $1,000 energy rebate, and we should pay for it with part of the record profits that the oil companies are making right now.

Huh? How is the Democrat plan to steal money from the oil companies going to lower the price of gas? Why not lower the taxes on oil and gas in a manner that is designed to start saving everyone money immediately? Lowering taxes on gas and oil would have a domino effect, resulting in lower costs for goods and produce while the Democrat plan of raising taxes on oil companies based on some Hugo Chavez like plan to eventually nationalize the oil companies will only serve to raise prices. Idiot.

Obama also said the following:

I also believe that in the short-term, as we transition to renewable energy, we can and should increase our domestic production of oil and natural gas. But we should start by telling the oil companies to drill on the 68 million acres they currently have access to but haven’t touched. And if they don’t, we should require them to give up their leases to someone who will.

As always, when a liberal politician concedes a conservative talking point they have to combine it with a liberal one that is of course based on a lie or some loose characterization meant to provide cover for previous liberal stances. That is exactly what Barack Obama did when he overstated the access that oil companies have to domestic resources and whether or not they are touching it. It is a flat out lie that was exposed by Investors Business Daily last week.

[Myth]: “Oil companies are sitting on 68 million acres of oil leases and refuse to drill.”

This is yet another slander of “Big Oil” by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi — one that has become a major talking point for Democrats in Congress. It’s completely dishonest.

Oil companies have spent billions of dollars for those leases. Drilling has increased by more than 66% since 2000. They are searching for oil even as you read this. Some parts of those 68 million acres will have oil, some won’t. But at $145 a barrel, you can bet oil companies have plenty of incentive to find it.

That said, 68 million acres is in fact a minuscule amount. Some 94% of federal lands — 658 million acres — remains off-limits to exploration. Another 97% — or 1.7 billion acres — of federal offshore properties likewise remains off-limits. These lands contain tens of billions of barrels of recoverable oil. It’s there for the taking, now.

How much energy is there? Federal lands, according to the American Petroleum Institute, hold 651 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, enough to fuel 60 million households for 160 years. They hold at least 116 billion barrels of oil, maybe more. That’s enough to fuel 65 million cars and provide fuel oil for 3.2 million homes for 60 years.

As such, it’s the height of irresponsibility for Congress to leave these lands off the table. It ensures we remain vulnerable to pariah petrostates like Venezuela, Saudi Arabia, Libya, Iran and others who wish us ill.

Here’s another whopper told by Barack Obama in his speech:

George Bush’s own Energy Department has said that if we opened up new areas to drilling today, we wouldn’t see a single drop of oil for seven years. Seven years. And Senator McCain knows that, which is why he admitted that his plan would only provide “psychological” relief to consumers. He also knows that if we opened up and drilled on every single square inch of our land and our shores, we would still find only three percent of the world’s oil reserves. Three percent for a country that uses 25% of the world’s oil. Even Texas oilman Boone Pickens, who’s calling for major new investments in alternative energy, has said, “this is one emergency we can’t drill our way out of.”

Whoa, so many whoppers, mis-characterizations and downright lies in one statement. Where to begin?

Let’s begin with that seven year argument. It was the same argument used by Clinton to shut down drilling in ANWAR in the mid nineties. Too bad for us though because we would be reaping the benefits of such drilling today had Democrats not blocked it in order to keep the perception of oil shortfalls as a political football.

Let’s play a game and imagine that it will take seven years to reap the benefits of domestic drilling. So what? It’s not like we can build an infrastructure around any other replacement in that short a period of time. Oil and gas on the other hand already have an economy, a distribution chain and all the other necessary evils that go into delivering and yes, trading, the commodity known as oil for now and the foreseeable future.

Imagine further that we actually get off of gas and oil for heating of housing and running our engines in cars, trucks, boats and mowers. Does that mean that oil will cease to exist as a needed resource? Hardly. Petroleum is used in all kinds of products, plastics, electronics and all that good stuff. At least we will continue to wean ourselves off a foreign based supply of a much need resource that will be required to sustain the world’s way of life for now and likely generations to come.

Rather than propose something sensible such as using domestic oil at least as a stop gap measure while new innovations are put in place Democrats propose new taxes and policies that will do nothing but hurt Americans. Which is the plan of course.

This whole notion of how much energy the United States uses as compared to the rest of the world is another indication that Barack Obama is not the man to run this country. Perhaps a post on the U.N. or something or other but not this country. We need a President that is going to keep his eye on the ball here. Sure he can play nice in the rest of the world but his number one priority is the United States. Sorry, that’s what the title implies.

We produce the energy we use. The main goal should be to get the base resource from domestic supplies while we research better approaches. That being said, nothing changes the fact that the United States will use more energy resources in terms of required energy in the future, not less.

By 2030, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, we will need at least 30% more energy to fuel our economy. Nearly 85% of that increase will come from oil and gas, even with expected gains for alternative energy. Can’t drill our way out? In fact, it’s the only way out of our energy crisis.

All that being said Barack Obama’s speech is just a feel good speech designed to capture the hearts of the nuts that don’t have a watt of brain power in their tiny little brains. Nothing but platitudinous bullshit. He is not proposing any solutions and typically only speaks in half truths such as when he quotes Boone Pickens, conveniently forgetting that Pickens includes drilling in his plan.

This isn’t a plan for the future. It is a plan of failure. It could very well become Obama’s legacy.

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