Jeff O'Bryant
But wait, there is even more good news. It’s a lose/lose situation for Obama no matter how you look at it. And when this president loses, the nation wins. If he backs down, we will very likely get the pipeline. The Senate, after all, is close to the number of needed votes to pass the measure, and without the veto threat, those votes should quickly fall into place.
And if he does not back down, then Republicans can hammer him all the way to November for the jobs and oil he will have denied Americans already struggling with a lack of both.
There is plenty for which one can criticize this president, but in the current environment of both high unemployment and high gas prices, working Americans, at least, will take an especially dim view of Obama’s lack of judgement on this issue, if only there are enough of them left to carry the day this coming November.
The pipeline both can and should become an important rallying point for Americans fed up with this administration’s hostility towards not only the industry that supplies the nation's life-blood, but to the very use of oil itself, as well as its failed attempt to create jobs. Gas was $1.84 per gallon when Bush left office. It is double that or more in many areas now, yet we still aren’t making anywhere near full use of our own oil reserves.
Why?
Obama doesn’t want us to, citing vague environmental concerns and bowing to environmental extremists spouting theories that are at the very best just that: theories.
The president has also claimed, over and over again, that we have only two percent of the world’s oil reserve, yet we use 20 percent.
So what?
But more importantly is a fact he could and indeed should add to that otherwise misleading claim is that he is talking about reserves we’ve already found. As Jim Angle recently reported in a Fox News article, “analysts point out that proven reserves were 20 billion barrels back in 1944. But we’ve produced some 170 billion barrels since then, and proven reserves are still just over 20 billion.”
We should drill anywhere there are known oil reserves and research any location where we even think there might be oil reserves. No reasonable person has any problem with researching and developing solar or any other source of alternative energy. But scams like Solyndra are poor substitutes to the real results and benefits drilling will bring to the country while we explore, rather than politicize, other options.
And while high fuel prices negatively impact virtually every segment of the economy, one that hits the closest to home of all is joblessness. Real unemployment, currently hovering around 15 percent (a total that includes not only those actively looking for full-time jobs but also those who have either given up completely or have taken part-time positions) is only 10 percentage points away from reaching Great Depression-era levels. Not the hope and change you were looking for? Well, weren’t you paying attention to what candidate Obama was actually saying?
But even more than what Obama said is what he believes. And it is this belief held by the president and so many others that leads to the majority of the ills that plague our nation. They are the direct result of following an empty philosophy that is as grounded in the realities of human nature and market forces as are Care Bears and unicorns. It is a philosophy that calls for individuals to carry their own weight, but creates an environment that destroys individual initiative; one that rewards failure and punishes success, that pretends moral superiority, yet is hostile to the source and standard of moral values, that preaches tolerance, but practices class-warfare, that believes the way to prosperity is to saddle our children and grandchildren under a massive, reckless and ultimately destructive national debt, that seeks to create an imaginary war on women while ignoring the very real war it perpetuates against responsible Americans, unborn children and cherished American traditions and values.
November can’t come fast enough.
Jeff O’Bryant is the author of “Up into the Hills – A Brief History of Catoosa County” and holds two degrees: a bachelor’s in education and a bachelor’s with honors in history. He can be contacted at jeffobryant@catt.com.
You are all proving what the politicos already know. We are incapable of making a rash decision in the U.S. anymore. We want people to tell us what to do!
Here is a clue... THEY ARE ALL WORKING FOR THE SAME PEOPLE!!!! THE BIG BANKSTERS (I.E. THE FEDERAL RESERVE ARE THE REAL ONES RUNNING THIS COUNTRY)
DEMOCRAT AND REPUBLICAN, IT DOESN'T MATTER, THEIR AGENDA IS THE SAME. POWER!!! THEY TREAT US ALL LIKE MUSHROOMS, KEEP YOU IN THE DARK, AND FEED YOU BULLCHIPS!!!
I HAVE HEARD ALL MY LIFE HOW WE NEED TO FIRE EVERYONE IN POLITICS, AND START ALL OVER, AND YET WE KEEP PUTTING THESE BIG CORPORATE SPONSORED CANDIDATES ON THE TICKET.
HERE IS ANOTHER CLUE, AS LONG AS WE KEEP DOING THAT, IT AIN'T EVER GOING TO CHANGE!
THEN YOU HAVE A MAN LIKE RON PAUL TRY TO MAKE THINGS RIGHT. THE MILITARY LOVES HIM, THAT SHOULD BE A CLUE THERE. HE IS FOR A CONSTITUTIONALLY RUN GOVERNMENT, BUT THE POLITICOS AND MAIN STREAM MEDIA TELL YOU HE IS A QUACK AND A LOON, SO WHAT DO YOU DO? YOU RUN TO THE BIGGEST 1% AROUND TO MAKE YOUR CANDIDATE, AND THEN CRY AND WHINE FOR THE NEXT FOUR YEARS BECAUSE OBAMA GETS RE-ELECTED.
As to the claim that liberals have always been the ones who have argued for human rights… arguing for them and doing something that insures them are two entirely different things. Iraq had torture chambers. Iraq had rape rooms. Saddam was a monster. On the top 10 list of walking human rights violations with Hitler at the top, Saddam isn't all that far behind. We put an end to that. If you were really concerned with human rights, you wouldn't care what reason Bush used to take that deranged dictator down. But as with everything else you spew, its never about the results, its about intentions. You are blind to the big picture.
And Obama IS about as liberal as you can get. To claim otherwise is insane.
The press loves to bury this information, likely because reporting it would mean having to explain why it is the case, but the info is out there, and not at all hard to find.
Here's one from only a few days ago:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/04/23/MN261O78QA.DTL
As with most mainstream reporting, this article tends to blame things on the magical "world market," rather than digging into the actual causes, but it does note the massive glut in both oil and gasoline, points out the fact that the U.S., because of this glut, is now exporting gas "in volumes not seen in a half a century," and notes that, in spite of this glut and plummeting U.S. demand for gas, prices are still soaring.
In the real world, there's such a glut that, as I said before, "The U.S. exported more gasoline, diesel and other fuels than it imported in 2011 for the first time since 1949, the Energy Department said."
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-02-29/u-s-was-net-oil-product-exporter-in-2011.html
The oil companies--not "LIBERAL econ-crazies"--have actually been strategically closing certain refineries since late last year, claiming they're not profitable. That this will result in even higher gas prices, to the extraordinary benefit of these same companies, is, I'm sure, entirely coincidental, just as is the fact that this is happening in an election year with a Democratic incumbent president, and the fact that gas prices have, for years, closely tracked the political fortunes of the Republican party, which the industry owns.
Those "coincidences" do, however, touch upon the subject of this thread, the "wisdom" of the column that started it. The party to which O'Bryant looks as a savior from high gas prices is entirely owned by Big Oil, the industry that has made such phenomenal profits from those prices. Taking the long view, 75% of total oil contributions, since 1990, have gone to Republicans; over 80%, since 2000, have gone to Repubs; in the current election cycle, 88% has gone to Repubs. Even as these companies turn in, ever quarter, larger profits than in recorded human history, congress can't even end even a fraction of the subsidy they receive from the U.S. government because of Republicans.
(That should not, however, be interpreted as praise for Demos. Oil is an extremely partisan industry, overall, but it buys Demos in oil states and on key committees, just as it does Repubs. Oil bought a big piece of the Obama in 2008, too, which is why he's been so friendly with them, but they'd always prefer a Republican--they gave more to McCain the last time around, and in the current election cycle so far, Obama is way down at #14 among recipients of oil largess--several GOP _House_ candidates have gotten more. One party is owned by oil, but both have people owned by it.)
In the real world, the Obama administration has operated in exactly the manner I've characterized it--a few years ago, it would uncontroversially be regarded as conservative Republican by everyone. While the Democrats have become conservative Republicans, the Republicans have become quasi-fascist--and often all but openly fascist--reactionaries, and only from that perspective could the Obama be presented as "liberal" anything.
What doesn't really touch upon the subject, here, are your comments on Iraq. Yes, Saddam was a monstrous abuser of human rights; no, that had absolutely nothing to do with the U.S. invasion (the Reagan and Bush Sr. administrations, in fact, were allied with him when he was committing those atrocities); yes, even suggesting human rights considerations played a role in Bush Jr.'s invasion is a massive lie that you tell knowing it to be one. Iraq isn't the subject of this thread.
So let the record show, based on the words of one of the biggest liberals of them all, that "national sovereignty is never a license to slaughter your people."
This really doesn't have anything to do with the topic at hand, but I'll throw in some comments anyway. Barack Obama is not "one of the biggest liberals of them all," nor, indeed, is he much of a liberal at all. He has, in fact, governed in a manner that, only a few years ago, would have seen him uncontroversially tagged as a conservative Republican by everyone. That's what created the much-remarked-upon "enthusiasm gap" in the last election cycle, and why Republicans were able to win--because everyone else stayed home.
As for the rest of what you say, it's born of historical ignorance. Liberals have always been the ones who have argued for human rights considerations in foreign policy, and they've always been opposed in this by conservatives. This is still the case today. The argument over Iraq had nothing to do with human rights, and if Bush had tried to sell an unprovoked, full-scale U.S. invasion based on such considerations, it would have never happened. But he wasn't interested in launching a war based on those considerations anyway, nor was anyone else pimping that insane adventure.
Citing $1.84/gallon--the price of gas when Obama was sworn in--as the price of gas "when Bush left office" is so misleading as to amount to a massive lie. The propagandists who created that line (which you're merely mindlessly parroting) apparently expect people to have no short-term memory at all (sort of like when they try to blame the Bush bailouts, carried out before Obama was even elected, on the Obama administration).
To refresh, the explosion of gas prices happened during the Bush administration. With the Man From Oil and his veto pen securely in the White House, the trend-line was up, up, up, tipping in at $4.12/gallon (slightly higher in this area). Prices temporarily plummeted only at the very end of Bush, and did so only because, simultaneously, the economy collapsed, and Big Oil (and Big Finance) were in a panic that their paid stooges (mostly in the Republican party) were going to get wiped out in the November elections, and their gravy train would be at an end.
The gas price you cite for "when Bush left office" was near the low-point of that temporary drop, which only lasted from the end of September 2008 to Jan. 2009. In that time, gas prices dropped from $4.12/gallon to $1.61/gallon (a bit lower in this area). They were $1.84/gallon when Obama was sworn in.
They recovered, from there, to $2.61/gallon in the next few months, then remained stable throughout the first 2 years of Obama and the Democratic congress--always between $2.50 and $2.86/gallon. It was only when Republicans recaptured the House after the 2010 elections (the House being where any congressional action must start) that the prices began to explode again--from $2.81/gallon to $3.96/gallon by May. They dropped after that, but the lowest they went while Repubs controlled the House was a brief stint at $3.22/gallon in Dec. 2011. Even WITH the Republican House, prices have never gone as high as they did during the Bush administration.
The reason for the relative stability during the Obama's first 2 years is that oil, unfortunately, found too much of a friend in this administration, which gets to another piece of the mythology you're parroting. The idea that this administration has a "hostility towards not only the industry that supplies the nation's life-blood, but to the very use of oil itself" has about as much to do with reality as Care Bears and unicorns. This administration has, in fact, overseen a massive expansion of oil drilling in the U.S. The number of active rigs, here, is now more than double what it was in 2009:
http://www.wtrg.com/rigs_graphs/short/rigus.gif
As the Washington Post reported (12 March, 2012), "with the exception of a spike in 2008, the current rig count is higher than any year since the early 1980s, according to figures compiled by WTRG Economics." The Energy Information Administration reported, a few months ago, that domestic crude production, which had been dropping since 1986, has been on the rise, and was higher last year than it had been since 2002.
TransCanada, the Canadian corporation behind the Keystone pipeline project, has done a masterful propaganda job, and the domestic right has found it a useful cudgel to wield against the Obama for exactly the reasons you outline above. But to be an effective weapon, it requires complete ignorance, of the kind to which you're playing above. It is a fact that the pipeline won't create many jobs, and it's a fact that it won't have any impact on the price of oil. TransCanada doesn't want Houston so they can sell more oil on the U.S. market--existing Canada/U.S. pipelines, alone, already have over 1 million barrels/day in unused excess capacity. TransCanada wants Houston because of the port, so they can sell elsewhere.
In spite of your persistent implication above, supply and demand has virtually nothing to do with gas prices in the U.S. It's one of the best-kept secrets among the press, but there is a glut of gasoline on the U.S. market, so much so that the U.S., for the last few years, has sold more of it abroad than it has imported. At the same time--repeating a pattern all too familiar with the half-dozen of us who actually bother to follow such things--demand for gas in the U.S. has dropped for years. SpendingPulse, which tracks retail sales data for MasterCard, reports that U.S. demand has dropped from 9.5 million barrels/day in 2007 to 8.5 million barrels/day so far this year. The Energy Information Administration reports that, while U.S. demand for gasoline this summer is projected to be at an 11-year low, the price of gasoline is expected to be near an all-time high. Supply up, demand down, yet U.S. prices soar.
So what IS at work, here? Part of it--as every wind-up corporate press drone loves to note--is the price of crude, which is set on a world market. There's more to it than that, though. There's blatant profiteering by the oil companies--they turn in record or near-record profits every quarter. And there's speculation in the commodities market by Wall Street firms. Whereas a little over a decade ago, around 70% of those involved in the oil futures market were people who actually used gas, today, 81% of it is speculation by financial institutions, who use no gas at all, but rake in big profits by driving up the price of it. Various estimates have placed the amount of the price at the pumps attributable to speculation at 30%-40%.