Sarah Palin’s Facebook response to Obama’s energy speech today
It’s unbelievable (literally) the rhetoric coming from President Obama today. This is coming from he who is manipulating the U.S. energy supply. President Obama is once again giving lip service to a “new energy proposal”; but let’s remember the last time he trotted out a “new energy proposal” – nearly a year ago to the day. The main difference is today we have $4 a gallon gas in some places in the country. This is no accident. This administration is not a passive observer to the trends that have inflated oil prices to dangerous levels. His war on domestic oil and gas exploration and production has caused us pain at the pump, endangered our already sluggish economic recovery, and threatened our national security.
Through a process of what candidate Obama once called “gradual adjustment,” American consumers have seen prices at the pump rise 67 percent since he took office. Meanwhile, the vast undeveloped reserves that could help to keep prices at the pump affordable remain locked up because of President Obama’s deliberate unwillingness to drill here and drill now. We’re subsidizing offshore drilling in Brazil and purchasing energy from them, instead of drilling ourselves and keeping those dollars circulating in our own economy to generate jobs here. The President said today, “There are no quick fixes.” He’s been in office for nearly three years now, and he’s about to launch his $1 billion re-election campaign. When can we expect any “fixes” from him? How high does the price of energy have to go?
So, here’s a little flashback to what I wrote on March 31, 2010, at National Review Online’s The Corner:
Many Americans fear that President Obama’s new energy proposal is once again “all talk and no real action,” this time in an effort to shore up fading support for the Democrats’ job-killing cap-and-trade (a.k.a. cap-and-tax) proposals. Behind the rhetoric lie new drilling bans and leasing delays; soon to follow are burdensome new environmental regulations. Instead of “drill, baby, drill,” the more you look into this the more you realize it’s “stall, baby, stall.”
Today the president said he’ll “consider potential areas for development in the mid and south Atlantic and the Gulf of Mexico, while studying and protecting sensitive areas in the Arctic.” As the former governor of one of America’s largest energy-producing states, a state oil and gas commissioner, and chair of the nation’s Interstate Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, I’ve seen plenty of such studies. What we need is action — action that results in the job growth and revenue that a robust drilling policy could provide. And let’s not forget that while Interior Department bureaucrats continue to hold up actual offshore drilling from taking place, Russia is moving full steam ahead on Arctic drilling, and China, Russia, and Venezuela are buying leases off the coast of Cuba.
As an Alaskan, I’m especially disheartened by the new ban on drilling in parts of the 49th state and the cancellation of lease sales in the Chukchi and Beaufort seas. These areas contain rich oil and gas reserves whose development is key to our country’s energy security. As I told Secretary Salazar last April, “Arctic exploration and development is a slow, demanding process. Delays or major restrictions in accessing these resources for environmentally responsible development are not in the national interest or the interests of the State of Alaska.”
Since I wrote the above, we have even more evidence of the President’s anti-drilling agenda. We have the moratorium in the Gulf of Mexico as well as the de-facto moratorium in the Arctic. We have his 2012 budget that proposes to eliminate several vital oil and natural gas production tax incentives. We have his anti-drilling regulatory policies that have stymied responsible development. And the list goes on. The President says that we can’t “drill” our way out of the problem. But we can’t drive our cars on solar shingles either. We have to live in the real world where we must continue to develop the conventional resources that we actually use right now to fuel our economy as we continue to look for a renewable source of energy.
If we are looking for an affordable, environmentally friendly, and abundant domestic source of energy, why not turn to our own domestic supply of natural gas? Whether we use it to power natural-gas cars or to run natural-gas power plants that charge electric cars, natural gas is an ideal “bridge fuel” to a future when more renewable sources are available, affordable, and economically viable on their own. It’s a lot more viable than subsidizing boondoggles like these inefficient electric cars that no one wants.
I’m all for electric cars if you can develop one I can actually use in Alaska, where you can drive hundreds of miles without seeing many people, let alone many electrical sockets. But these electric and hybrid cars are not a quick fix because we still need an energy source to power them. That’s why I like natural gas, but we still have to drill for natural gas, and this administration doesn’t like drilling or apparently the jobs that come with responsible oil and natural gas development. They don’t have a coherent energy policy. They have piecemeal ideas for subsidizing impractical pet “green” projects.
I have always been in favor of an “all-of-the-above” approach to energy independence, but “all-of-the-above” means conventional resource development too. It means a coherent, practical, and forward-looking energy policy. I wish the President would understand this. The good news is there is nothing wrong with America’s energy policy that another good old-fashion election can’t solve. 2012 is just around the corner.
– Sarah Palin
I agree that natural gas is a possible answer to the energy problems of the country. Of course, solar or wind energy are more cleaner and ecological but it is not possible to compare those with cheap natural gas.
Shalom Kalev
You said,
I grew up in a blue collar/ pink collar family, descended of farmers and farm laborers who had become factory workers. I was taught that if I studied and worked hard, I would prosper; and my parents indeed did that, working over thirty years each on union jobs and retiring with liveable pensions. Now the unions are gone, except for government employees, and the hardest workers get the lowest pay. The people with big incomes and pensions do not produce anything useful, but are financial planners, lawyers and the like. I am a Chemist, with a broad background in pharmaceudical synthesis, resin manufacture and electronically and optically active materials; but I am too old, have been out of the field too long (this happens after only a couple of years), and am out-bid in every specialty by Koreans, Egyptians, Turks, Poles and Chinamen. I live and eat, by the tender mercies of my wife, who is a nurse with a modest but liveable income. The irony, is that we have a “company store”: Most of our bills are paid to the very company my wife works for. The world my parents and grandparents lived in and worked in no longer exists, and their ethics have been turned into a lie.
I don’t work hard anymore. I can’t — I’m old. What I do, is try to spend my time profitably before God, doing the things (such as posting here, and producing a public access TV show) that He has uniquely blessed me with doing. These are not “profitable” things to do, in the Capitalist sense; and they aren’t even “profitable” unto God: He gave me much, and I am giving back a little. My daughter supported herself through college, holding menial jobs, and got a degree. She now lives comfortably overseas, having emigrated just as my grandparents did a hundred years ago, as a housewife of a businessman. My son is talented in many ways, but not in ways that employers consider profitable; he lives on a meager disability income, and is locked into that circumstance for the rest of his life. I never taught my children to seek after wealth; but rather to be rich toward God. They have followed my teaching, and that of my wife, and we will not be ashamed before our Maker on account of them.
Living at peace between ourselves and God, is something we can all do; but we have little control over our circumstances. We can work hard, work smartly, work cleverly and work greedily. We can emass great wealth, like George Soros; but none of this will ultimately do us or those we love any good. In the end, we will sink or swim in eternity according to our Godliness; and the world will be judged according to its Godliness. I write letters, more often than most, to my senators and congressman. My wife and I supported John McCain against Obama, to the tune of around a thousand dollars (not spare change to us). Obama won, though, and my Senators and Congressman now are all Democrats. I put forth a good effort; but I don’t pin my hopes on these things. The world is believing and living a lie, and will reap the consequences. The best and least I can do, my sacred duty, is to speak and live the truth as well as I can.
That said, I need to go do dishes.
Shalom shalom 🙂
First of all “BlandOatmeal” is mostly correct about the “END times” scenario.
What most disappoints me in all of this is “We The People” are sitting back and allowing this to happen. We need to be on our phones calling our representatives and demanding they stop Obama from doing the many things he is doing to destroy our country. We need to be much more vocal and we need to various Tea Parties to link together and plan massive protest in various cities throughout the USA, and demand the press cover our protests.
Brazilian farmland and forest has been dedicated to ethanol production, causing not only deforestation but a drop in world food production (the latter of which sparked the current unrest in the Middle East). Farmers there no longer farm, because the ethanol industry (1) pays them to turn over their acreage to the ethanol producers, and (2) sends in the crews to plant and harvest. The “farmers” (actually idle landowners) simply have to sit back and drink their mint julips. There is no incentive to grow food and other crops. I have never seen this in the press: I got the info from a family member who does business in Brazil. “Renewable energy” is a farce. Once the world’s acreage is dedicated to ethanol, no additional sources can be exploited. Meanwhile, the world starves, starting with the poorest countries. Neither is hydroelectric power free: Here in the Northwest, known for its massive hydroelectric resources, dams are actually being destroyed because of their damage to the environment and fishing industry. The world is simply producing too many people, demanding too many goods: too many people, without the knowledge of God in them. We are moving quickly toward a resource climax: We don’t have enough lumber, so we use plastic — which comes from fossil fuels. What will we use, when fossil fuels are no longer available? Aluminum used to be manufactured using Greenland cryolite. That cryolite is all gone, and we now use fluorite. The Chinese are cutting back on Rare Earth metal exports, to save enough for themselves. Water is becoming more precious than petroleum in some places. The supply side of the equation is not only static; it is dwindling. Meanwhile, demand keeps going up, fed by population growth and Hollywood’s promotion of the “good life”.
Obama cannot solve these problems. All he can do, is cater to rich people like George Soros who want to get even richer by creating and exploiting one type of scarcity after another. The Republicans can do no better: candidates from both parties rely on wealthy backers, and those wealthy backers have a self interest in exacerbating the problem, not solving it. Today, we have food riots in the Middle East. How long will it be, before we have gasoline riots? Water riots? Pollution riots? Meanwhile, the Soroses of the earth will get rich, grow old and die, leaving a trail of misery in their wake.
These are not ordinary times: They are climactic times, apocalyptic times, END times for all the earth, including Israel. We do well to acknowledge this fact, and not hope for Obama or some other “messiah” to save us from them. The people of this world will be rioting and killing one another — including Jews, who will increasingly attack each another, brother against brother. These are times to order our lives before God, and to make peace with our Maker; to stand for truth and justice, and to oppose evil — even to our own hurt. There is no viable alternative energy, and there is no moral alternative: The Judge is at the gates, and He will demand a reckoning.
Obama’s energy plan is working perfectly and consists of two parts. Part one is to keep pretending that he wants to solve our energy problems. Part two is to make us more dependent on imported energy while driving up prices. This is consistent with his real purpose to lull America to sleep while he destroys this country along with our allies and all to benefit our enemies.
Some REAL solution to our energy needs can be found at http://www.byronwine.com.