Energy Prices

While American businesses try desperately to get into the black, and the nation's government sinks deeper into the red, we have found that for many Democrats (and girlie men)  there's no way you can be too Green.

So Scott Brown raised the political temperature of chilly Massachusetts this week by coming our against John Kerry's pet cause, the Cap & Trade global warming bill.  

He called on his opponent, Democrat Martha Coakley, to join in opposition.

U.S. Senate candidate Scott Brown today called on his opponent Martha Coakley to drop her support for a national cap and trade bill, which will raise energy costs on businesses and consumers and kill jobs at a time when the economy is on the brink.

Yesterday, at an event with environmental groups, Coakley reaffirmed her support for cap and trade, which President Obama admitted in a 2008 interview with the San Francisco Chronicle will cause energy prices to skyrocket. See video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CNSZ62xiD4M&feature=related

In classic Tip O'Neill "all politics is local" style, Brown pointed out that MA's high energy costs had already cost the state 400 high tech jobs which computer firm EMC was moving to the Carolinas.

Needless to say, Ms. Coakley is a true believer in the global warming crusade, as are her Democrat allies in MA.

I wonder if an even better argument against Cap & Trade isn't that the folks it will benefit are Wall Street commodities and deriviative barons like the wife of Senator Chris Dodd? Do we really need to give Goldman Sachs another government sponsored profit center?

Anyway, I wonder how well the whole global warming schtick is going to sell between now and the January 19 special election, considering much of the Commonwealth is going to be buried under a blizzard tomorrow afternoon.  

Nonetheless, less than 30 minutes after the NWS in Taunton announced the blizzard watch, John Kerry was sending a blast e-mail around complaining that Jim Imhofe snowed on his parade in Copenhagen by telling the folks cap & trade would never pass the Senate.

Kerry said  "Attempts to twist reality and spread distortions won't work if you won't let them"

Could the "reality-based community" please tell us how tomorrow's blizzard is some sort of twisted reality and distortion? It would sure beat running the snowblower.

I think Scott Brown did well this week, since I think many voters in MA may be tired of the snow job the greeniacs have been promoting against the average consumer. 

I believe there is a chance we can get on the right side of public disgust over gas prices like we did on taxes in the '70s and '80s, but we have to act decisively in framing Democrats as consistently anti-energy and against using every weapon in our arsenal (OCS, ANWR, shale oil, as well as conservation) to combat record-high gas prices. -Patrick

It was Energy Week over at my blog Weapons of Mass Discussion last week and with the topic still ringing as relevent, I thought it might be worth taking a look at some of the polling which shows that campaigning against the Pelosi Premium is a winner.

Let's start with Gallup (May 28th), where we discover that 57% of the American people favor "drilling in U.S. coastal and wilderness areas now off limits."  Now there is some bad news in that poll too as 53% think that price controls are a good idea (45% do not).  While 58% think that releasing some of the Strategic Petrolium Reserves (SPR) is a good idea (while 40% do not) only 49% support halting new shipments to the SPR.  The statistic that will have the treehuggers running for the hills is that 20% support gas rationing while 79% do not.

It’s a gas:
The greatest nation on Earth
Sinks to its knees
In a puddle of oil.
Fuel-starved masses sit immobile.
Four dollar Gas,
Ripping the heart out of the middle class.

It’s a gas:
We’re dying of thirst
Two feet from the reservoir.
One hundred and thirty billion
Barrels of oil sit untapped
Within our borders
And off our shores,
As the working man is strung up
By green red tape.

It’s a gas:
The Donkey party brays
Against the oil companies,
Making them the scapegoats
For our pain at the pump,
And plan to increase their taxes,
As if increasing the cost of making gas
Will make it more affordable
For the working class. .

It’s a gas:
Great men made the world smaller,
Bringing us closer together.
Freedom for the common man to travel
Where he pleases on any highway or street.
But a few fools can take us back
To the 19th Century.
Now our urban planners dream and scheme
Of a rising cost of freedom,
To squeeze as many people
As they can onto cramped buses,
Herded like cattle,
Moving at the schedule of government
Rather than their own speed.

It’s a gas:
I got a letter the other day from a Senator,
Who self-righteously preened and posed
As he was hugged by the Sierra Club
For his obstructionism of an Arctic Oil venture
That could have helped alleviate this crisis.
He asked me to reach into my gas-strained pocket,
To help his campaign.
He even kindly suggested amounts:
$25, $50, $100, $250, or even $2300!
Now that’s a gas.

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