Joan Swirsky is a nurse who became an author. She has her point of view and she expresses it forcefully. Her website tells you something about her. However, her recent article explaining why, as a Jew, she would never vote for Obama has created somewhat of a stir.

Russian emigré to Israel Natan Sharanksy (author of the best-selling "The Case for Democracy" also recently said he could not support Obama; he was a "risk" to Israel. As for McCain, Sharanksy said he was "a person of principle" who has "absolutely a great record of supporting Israel."

Swirsky lists many reasons why she, as a Jewish American, cannot and will not vote for Barack Obama. Her stinging conclusion:

I ask: Does Obama have any friends, associates, mentors or advisors who don’t hate America and Israel? If so, e-mail me. I haven’t found one yet!

Any voter – whether Democrat, Republican or Independent – should find Obama’s far-left voting record and silly-putty changes-o- mind on crucial policy issues reason enough not to vote for him in November.

Certainly, every American Jew should consider his ascension to the presidency a virtual death knell for Israel.

If the corrupt ACORN group he so heartily supported in the Chicago machine – where he “made his bones” – doesn’t rig the election with the votes of millions of dead people and convicts, as they have so many times in the past. I trust the electorate will do the right thing.

The right thing, of course, would be vote against Obama, a candidate who has been infested with far more odious things than fleas, specifically the treacherous anti-American, anti-Israel advice that has clearly shaped his worldview.

Obama would make America less safe, and an unsafe America – which is the last, best hope for the survival of the Jews and Israel – would destroy the twin pillars of steadfast Judeo-Christian values. Destroying both nations is the goal of the Jihadists that Obama would sooner chat with than confront.

Read the whole thing here. We don't think she would mind.

Why does John McCain describe radical Islam as the "transcendent challenge" of our times?

Unless there is a revolution of the natives, European civilization in Europe will disappear before the end of this century. Already 20 to 50 million Muslims are in Europe, most of whom have refused to assimilate. They cluster in their own neighborhoods living as they would in Pakistan or Sudan, maintaining their alien Islamic culture and intimidating the natives to change their practices and ways. Continuing immigration and high birth rates -- while the natives are failing to even reproduce their numbers -- are leading to increasing Muslim dominance. Amsterdam and Rotterdam, for example, are close to being majority Muslim cities now.

What will a Muslim-dominated Europe be like?

Under Islamic law, if one refuses to become Muslim, one is subject to death unless he or she agrees to a humiliating, underclass status (dhimmitude) and pays special (historically onerous) taxes not levied on Muslims. During the so-called Golden Age of Islam Islamic centers such as Baghdad and Damascus flourished with the riches of those taxes and the hired talents of Christians, Jews, Zoroastrians and other non-Muslims. As the generations went on, non-Muslims tired of their underclass status and converted to Islam and became as warlike and and uninterested in real work as their fellow Muslims. So Muslim society collapsed and has been revived only because of the discovery and development in Muslim lands -- by westerners -- of oil and gas vital to the West.

Europe is succumbing to a demographic and ideological takeover, the kind of jihad that is already being waged against the United States.

Muslims are smart enough to realize they have the best chance now in 1400 years to take over the world: They have the oil, they have the money, they have the true believers (growing greater in numbers every day as Saudi madrassas recruit the young to what Mohammad commanded was every Muslim’s duty – jihad until Islam rules the world). What Iran’s leaders say about killing Americans (Great Satan) and Israeli (Little Satan) is no aberration, no departure from Koranic teaching at all. They and the House of Saud may be contending for leadership of the Islamic masses or ummah, but they are united in their goal of achieving power over the world.

With their supreme sense of superiority, an imperial ideology, more than a billion adherents (whom they are willing to sacrifice in the millions) and, soon, nuclear weapons facing off against an anxious-to-please, politically correct, pacifist, let-us-reason-together West, who will have to lead the fight against them if not the United States?

Unflortunately, for America's and the world's sake, Obama doesn't see the challenge at all. As he said in Berlin, all walls between Muslims and the rest of the world should come down and peace will prevail. History tells a different story.

This article from May has even more relevance today.

May 24, 2008, 0:00 a.m.

Wright Connection
A haunting presence for Obama.

By Michael Barone

As Barack Obama makes his slow but steady way toward the Democratic nomination, the assumption in the admiring precincts of the press corps is that voters have dismissed as irrelevant his longtime association with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. But that may prove as mistaken as the assumption, back in 1988, that voters would not be impressed by Michael Dukakis’s 11-year support of a law granting weekend furloughs to convicts sentenced to life without parole, an issue brought up in the primaries by Al Gore but largely ignored in press coverage at the time.

Evidence for this comes in the exit polls from the West Virginia and Kentucky primaries on May 13 and 20. In both, about half the voters — and these are voters in the Democratic primary — said that they believe Obama shares Wright’s views either somewhat or a lot. And slightly under 50 percent of these voters said that Obama is honest and trustworthy.

To be sure, these were primaries in which Obama was beaten, and beaten badly, by Hillary Clinton — 67 percent to 26 percent in West Virginia, 66 percent to 30 percent in Kentucky. So they would be inclined, one might believe, to think ill of Obama. Yet it is not universally the case that voters who choose one candidate in a hotly contested election doubt whether the other candidate is honest. You can oppose someone who you believe to be trustworthy. Only 38 percent of Americans voted for Barry Goldwater in 1964 and George McGovern in 1972. But probably a higher percentage believed that they were basically honest.

Which leads me to ask why these voters declined to say Obama is honest. When have they seen him lie or being caught in a lie? The response to the question on Wright may provide the answer. They know that he attended Wright’s church for 20 years. They know that he said, both on March 18 when he refused to renounce Wright and on April 29 when he did renounce him, that he was not aware of his pastor and spiritual mentor’s incendiary comments. Yet half of these voters also think that, despite those statements, Obama agrees with what Wright has been saying.

It’s a little dangerous in interpreting polls to assume that voters’ thinking proceeds along logical lines. People who aren’t professionally involved in politics, whose knowledge comes from bits and snippets of news, can hold beliefs that are contradictory or in tension with each other. They don’t feel obliged to resolve contradictions. But even granting that, it seems to me that about half of West Virginia and Kentucky Democratic primary voters were saying that Obama lied about not knowing what Wright has been preaching and that he agrees with him a lot more than he has let on.

Now West Virginia and Kentucky are not typical primary states. They, together with Arkansas, where Hillary Clinton was First Lady for 12 years, were Obama’s weakest states in this year’s primaries. And some percentage of registered Democrats in these states have been voting Republican in recent presidential elections. Nevertheless, the negative verdict these voters render on Obama’s honesty and his relationship with Wright is likely to be typical of some significant quantum of potential Democratic voters this year. And not just in states like West Virginia and Kentucky, which he will certainly lose, but in marginal states which he must carry in order to be elected.

I find confirmation from this in a recent focus group conducted for the Annenberg Public Policy Center by pollster Peter Hart (for whom I worked for seven years) of non-primary voters in Charlottesville, Va. As Hart and Alex Horowitz note in their analysis of reactions to Obama, “When asked to recount any two memories of the total presidential campaign so far, seven of the 12 participants cite Rev. Wright by name. So far, clips of Rev. Wright clearly are the one ‘key defining moment’ of this campaign.”

Most reporters are liberals, whose circles of friends and acquaintances have included people with views not dissimilar to those of Wright or William Ayers, the unrepentant Weather Underground bomber with whom Obama served on a nonprofit board and at whose house his state Senate candidacy was launched. Such reporters don’t find these views utterly repugnant or particularly noteworthy. But most American voters do. And they wonder whether a candidate who associates with such people agrees with them — or disbelieve him when he says he doesn’t.

Though most in the press won’t admit it, that’s a problem — for the Obama candidacy and for the whole Democratic party once it nominates him.

While Pelosi-Obama-Reid continue to keep their heads buried in desert sand, Brazil is showing there is lots of oil in the continental shelf.

Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer recently marveled at the stupidity of Democrats in not doing what every sensible American wants done: Drill our way out of high prices and dependence on the Middle East and Venezauela.

American oil reserves have been in decline because Democrats in Congress have banned new exploration and development for decades.

Brazil’s oil reserves are soaring because Brazil is developing its own resources. Even its European partners are benefitting.

As new discoveries are made, the estimate of new reserves for Brazil are going up. Speculation now centers around 50 billion barrels of new oil in Brazil’s offshore region. That’s five times Brazil’s reserves as of last year (11 billion) and 2½ times all of the reserves of the U.S (21 billion).

Yet the estimates for banned areas offshore the U.S., in ANWR and in Rocky Mountain shale exceed one trillion barrels of oil or oil equivalents. The results of this failure to drill are high prices for gas, home heating oil and jet fuel and crude oil itself and unhealthy dependence on hostile and unstable oil producers.

The number one exporter of oil to the U.S. is Canada. Canada, like Brazil, has been aggressively exploring and developing its own natural resources. Canada has been building its reserves even as production in mature oil fields is flattening or declining. That’s fortunate for the U.S., since Canadian oil exports to the U.S. have been growing to help support economic growth.

Here’s the most recent news out of Brazil:

Galp Advances After Making New Oil Find in Brazil
By Joao Lima
Aug. 8 (Bloomberg) -- Galp Energia SGPS SA, Portugal's biggest oil company, rose in Lisbon trading after finding light crude oil in a deepwater well in Brazil's Santos Basin, the location of the biggest discovery in the Americas since 1976. …
Tupi is the largest oil discovery in the Americas since Mexico's Cantarell field was found in 1976, and compares with the 12 billion barrels held at Kazakhstan's Kashagan field, the largest oil find in the last three decades.
Petroleo Brasileiro SA, Brazil's state-controlled oil company, is the operator and owns 65 percent of the BM-S-11 block where both the Iara and Tupi wells were drilled. BG owns 25 percent and Galp owns 10 percent.
Estimated Reserves
``Given the discovery, recoverable reserves on block BM-S- 11 could increase to 10 billion barrels from currently 5 billion to 8 billion barrels,'' Kapadia said.
Iara is in Brazil's ``pre-salt'' offshore region, a new oil province that may contain about 50 billion barrels of oil according to Peter Wells, a director at U.K. research company Neftex Petroleum Consultants Ltd. The Iara well, which has yet to be declared commercially viable, is still being drilled in the hope of finding more oil at greater depths.
Some oil industry analysts, including David Thomas from Citigroup Global Markets Inc., have said that Tupi, Tupi Sul and Iara may be linked as part of a larger offshore deposit.
Petrobras in January said that a gas and oil discovery known as Jupiter, in the Santos Basin's BM-S-24 block, could be as big as Tupi. Petrobras owns 80 percent of Jupiter and operates the well. Galp has 20 percent of Jupiter. …

Do we need oil? Despite what Obama says, of course. (Obama wants to end the use of oil "in our time.")

This chart shows that 70% of our oil is used for transportation. That's not only motor vehicles, but airplanes and ships. That includes our defense capability -- destroyers, cruisers, aircraft carriers, fighter aircraft, landiing craft and tanks.

At the present times 96% of transportation propulsion comes from petroleum; 2% from biofuels and 2% from natural gas.

Most of the rest of oil goes into petrochemicals for use in everything from plastics to detergents.

1Excludes 0.6 quadrillion Btu of ethanol, which is included in "Renewable Energy.”
2Excludes supplemental gaseous fuels.
3Includes 0.1 quadrillion Btu of coal coke net imports.
4Conventional hydroelectric power, geothermal, solar/PV, wind, and biomass.
5Includes industrial combined-heat-and-power (CHP) and industrial electricity-only plants.
6Includes commercial combined-heat-and-power (CHP) and commercial electricity-only plants.
7Electricity-only and combined-heat-and-power (CHP) plants whose primary business is to sell electricity, or electricity and heat, to the public.

Note: Sum of components may not equal 100 percent due to independent rounding.
Source: Energy Information Administration, Annual Energy Review 2007, Tables 1.3 and 2.1b-2.1f, and 10.3.
Source

An enthusiastic crowd of supporters jammed the function room at the 400 East Restaurant in Harwich to hear Massachusetts State Committee Chairman Peter Torkildsen give a rousing introduction to Don.

Massachusetts has suffered badly from one party government and Howell's Democratic opponent does what the Democratic leadership says. We need more voices on Beacon Hill that will oppose the fleecing of the Massachusetts taxpayer.

It's time to remake the two-party system in Massachusetts. Don Howell will stand up for traditional Republican values and will not be beholden to any special interest. His long experience in dealing with the problems of real people as a selectman and as an owner of a small business puts him on the side of those who can't stand the extravagant spending of the Democratic majority.

With a Democratic governor and the legislature controlled by Democrats, state spending is unrestrained, the deficit is balooning and, guess what, the Democrats are talking about more taxes again. The entrenched Democratic majority ignores the will of the people: They don't care what people think, as negative votes on referenda and laws supported by large public majorities attest.

Just think, the Speaker of the House has been there for 30 years! He even has Democratic buddies who have been there longer. Don Howell will help lead the fight to break up this unhealthy monopoly on power by filing a bill to limit the number of terms state legislators can be in office. The founding fathers envisioned citizen legislators, not lifetime careerists intent on a fat public pension.

It's time to fight back for sanity in government. You don't have to just sit there, shrug and say there's nothing you can do, as frustrated as you are. It's time for Don Howell to go to Beacon Hil from the Fourth Barnstable District.

If you live in Harwich, Chatham, Orleans, Eastham, Wellfleet, Truro or Provincetown and you want a fighter on Beacon Hill for you, someone not in the pocket of any special interest or the Speaker of the House, support Don with your money, your emails, your phone calls and your bumper stickers and then vote for Don Howell on November 4th. Donate and volunteer at Don's website. For more information, email Don at info@electdonhowell.com.or dhowell@cape.com.

The Wall Street Journal notes some questions are being asked about why a Belgian beer company was able to buy Anheuser-Busch and not the other way around.

Taxes were a big part of the reason. The Bud boys were paying almost twice as much in taxes as the Begian company InBev. U.S. corporate taxes are now among the highest in the world. John McCain wants to cut the corporate tax rate to 25%, which is about the world average (Ireland's is 12.5%, for example.) Obama has only been talking about raising taxes. John McCain understands the economy, Obama doesn't. Another reason to vote for John McCain.

Democrat Speaker of the House Pelosi closed down the House Friday and left town in a hurry, making sure there would be no vote authorizing drilling in the outer continental shelves. She claimed she was “saving the planet.” (See Charles Krauthammer’s destruction of that ludicrously false argument.)

However, Republicans stayed on the House floor to argue for drilling. Pelosi heard about it and ordered that the lights and microphones be shut off and C-Span to stop broadcasting. Everyone was to be evicted from the House chamber. Talk about heavy-handed totalitarian rule acting against the interest of the American people.

The Republicans dug in, as these four reports from National Review writers show. As Mark Hemingway notes, “It really looks like Congressional Republicans are getting some of their mojo back.”

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi opposes lifting the moratorium on drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and on the Outer Continental Shelf. She won't even allow it to come to a vote. With $4 gas having massively shifted public opinion in favor of domestic production, she wants to protect her Democratic members from having to cast an anti-drilling election-year vote. Moreover, given the public mood, she might even lose. This cannot be permitted. Why? Because as she explained to Politico: "I'm trying to save the planet; I'm trying to save the planet."

A lovely sentiment. But has Pelosi actually thought through the moratorium's actual effects on the planet?

Why has Pelosi only thought about the American part of the planet where the best and safest technology is available operating under one of the best enviromental regulatory regimes?

The world consumes 86 million barrels a day; the United States, roughly 20 million. We need the stuff to run our cars and planes and economy. Where does it come from?

Continue reading "DRILLING AND BLISSFUL IGNORANCE"

Posted by Republican on Friday, August 1, 2008 at 12:02 PM
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Some expressed astonishment when Obama intoned that "we are the ones we've been waiting for," which of course meant "I am the one you've been waiting for." Twice before we had noted the swelling arrogance of Obama.

In Germany it was "generations from now we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment," you know, "when the rise of the oceans began to slow" because those cars in Boston which were melting the Arctic ice cap were impounded by his enviropolice.

Then there was the Obama quasi-presidential seal -- he couldn't wait.

At an intimate gathering of House members last night reporting on his triumphal tour of Europe (during which he bugged out of a scheduled visit to wounded servicemen) he announced to his open-mouthed listeners, "I have become a symbol of the possibility of America returning to our best traditions."

Well, all this deserves a whole new book, don't you think?

Even the Bush-trashing Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank is choking on this:

"Barack Obama has long been his party's presumptive nominee. Now he's becoming its presumptuous nominee."

The Republican National Committee is getting into the swing of things and has launched its Obama Audacity Watch.

Watch this space.

It's seldom one hears anything positive about America or patriotic coming out of Hollywood. It's nothing like it was during World War II, when Hollywood felt it was its job to keep America's spirits and pride up even at the toughest of times.

So when a sensible, direct statement comes from a Hollywood figure it is a reason to cheer. However, one can be sure that most of the media will ignore it because it doesn't fit with their Obama-the-next-president narrative.

Jon Voight knows what he's talking about. An excerpt:

Our soldiers are lifting us to an example of patriotism at a time when we've almost forgotten who we are and what is at stake. If Mr. Obama had his way, he would have pulled our troops from Iraq years ago and initiated an unprecedented bloodbath, turning over that country to the barbarianism of our enemies.

With what he has openly stated about his plans for our military, and his lack of understanding about the true nature of our enemies, there's not a cell in my body that can accept the idea that Mr. Obama can keep us safe from the terrorists around the world, and from Iran, which is making great strides toward getting the atomic bomb.

Rep. Eric Cantor of Virginia, who is leading the Republicans in the House of Representatives fighting to get the Democratic ban on domestic drilling lifted, charged that the Democrats were "beholden to environmental extremists."

Investor's Business Daily has detailed how true that charge is.

Let's face it. The average individual American has little or no clout with Congress and can be safely ignored. But it's a different story with groups such as the Environmental Defense Fund, Sierra Club and Nature Conservancy.

When they speak, Congress listens. Unlike the average American, they are well organized, loaded with cash and well positioned to be a disobedient congressman's worse nightmare. Their political and economic success has been a near disaster for our nation.

For several decades, environmentalists have managed to get Congress to keep most of our oil resources off-limits to exploration and drilling.

They've managed to have the Congress enact onerous regulations that have made refinery construction impossible.

Similarly, they've used the courts and Congress to completely stymie the construction of nuclear power plants. As a result, energy prices are at historical highs and threaten our economy and national security.

The massive damage these organizations have done is only a prelude to what they're planning as they use the global warming scare to ram dangerous new laws through Congress to allow this or prohibit that.

The possibilities for control over our lives would be endless and could include nuisance-type edicts such a requiring us to buy a permit to barbecue in our backyard.

The thirst to wield massive control over our economy helps explain the near religious belief in man-made global warming and the attacks on scientists and others who offer contradictory evidence.

Defeating Pelois-Obama-Reid and their environmental extremists on drilling is a necessary first step to turning back those who would control our lives to "save the planet (Pelosi's very words)."

Jeff Beatty supports domestic drilling. John Kerry is against it. Yet another reason to retire Kerry this November.

UPDATE: Charles Krauthammer takes on Democrat Speaker Pelosi's desire to "save the planet."

The Republicans in both the House and Senate have been pressing for votes to open up new drilling in the U.S. to bring oil and gas prices down. But the Democrats led by their unholy trinity of Pelosi-Obama-Reid are doing all they can to block votes.

Eric Cantor, the Republican chief deputy whip in the House, is one of those leading the fight to get relief at the pump for Americans. Cantor is a rising star and is on the short list of those being mentioned as a running mate for John McCain.

In a detailed account provided to Power Line, Cantor describes the mess Democrats have created with their opposition to drilling:

While American families are enraged over pain at the pumps, Democrat leaders, beholden to environmental extremists, remain mired in an anti-drilling posture that pits them against a clear majority of the American people. And they know they are vulnerable too.

So what exactly are the "Don't Drill" Democrat leaders Pelosi-Obama-Reid doing?

Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid have ducked and dodged a debate over drilling at every turn. Reid has bogged down bills by stonewalling Republican amendments aimed to bolster American energy exploration. Pelosi has foisted bills onto the suspension calendar to thwart the addition of Republican pro-drilling amendments. Meanwhile, House Appropriations Chairman David Obey went so far as to shut down the FY ’09 appropriations process because his party couldn’t stomach a debate on offshore drilling.

So what is their strategy then? The Democrats’ goal is to pull the wool over the eyes of the American people. Look like you are doing something substantial, rail against “Big Oil” and other convenient scapegoats you can find, and pray the public doesn’t catch on.

Continue reading "REPUBLICANS FIGHT FOR GAS PUMP RELIEF"

Posted by Republican on Wednesday, July 30, 2008 at 5:22 PM
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There are many sharp differences between the positions of John McCain and Obama. McCain wants to give kids at the bottom of the economic ladder a chance to get a better educuation. Parents should have a choice. John McCain puts it very well:

"When a public system fails, repeatedly, to meet these minimal objectives, parents ask only for a choice in the education of their children." Some parents may opt for a better public school or a charter school; others for a private school. The point, said the Senator, is that "no entrenched bureaucracy or union should deny parents that choice and children that opportunity."

Obama backs the teachers union in opposing that opportunity, brushing it aside by calling it nothing but "tired rhetoric about vouchers and school choice." It is no coincidence the teachers unions support Obama for president.

The Wall Street Journal calls the nation's failure to provide a decent education to children in the inner cities "The Greatest Scandal." It is a tragedy not only for the children and their parents, but for the communities and the nation. HIgh drop-out rates lead to more crime, lower lifetime incomes, more welfare dependency and the loss of a productive citizenry.

The success of alternatives which parents can and do choose is overwhelming. But the Democratic Party is doing all it can to deny families school choice -- in Congress and at the local school boards in inner-city neighborhoods, wherever the unions are strong. Democrat Obama exercises his choice and sends his own children to private school in Chicago instead of the public schools in his district.

Just another reason why the nation will be far better off with John McCain as president and Jeff Beatty as a senator from Massachusetts.

Read the WSJ piece here.

A military spokesman told them this:

[B]ecause political candidates are prohibited from using military installations as campaign backdrops, Obama's representatives were told, ‘he could only bring two or three of his Senate staff member (sic), no campaign officials or workers.’ In addition, ‘Obama could not bring any media. Only military photographers would be permitted to record Obama's visit.’

What, no media? Apparently, forgetaboutit.

Instead, Obama went to the gym and sightseeing in Berlin.

Update: John McCain also noticed what Obama didn't do.

McCain is the Man for America.

Now we all know that transportation these days runs on oil. Someday there will other reliable means to power us out of our dependence on foreign oil. But in the meantime those who are realistic know we need to drill for oil in our own country.

That's why we have to break the Democratic obstructionism in Congress. Democrats control Congress, so everyone should call his or her Democratic congressional representative to say you're for bringing down the price of gas at the pump and you want drilling now.

Don't bother calling the Republicans. They've been fighting the Democrats to get drilling going, but the Democrats JUST SAY NO to bringing gas prices down. Your call might make the difference. .

Transportation needs reliable energy now.

The highly respected political analyst Michael Barone feels the ground shifting. "Enviro Lunacy" may at last be fading. $4 a gallon for gas puts things in perspective, at least for ordinary Americans.

While the Republicans are demanding an end to the various Democratic moratoriums on drilling, the Democrats, who control Congress, led by their unhold trinity of Pelosi-Obama-Reid, JUST SAY NO to the American people. They clearly have superior insights and know better than you.

Democratic leaders are preventing Congress from voting on continental shelf and ANWR drilling or oil shale development because they fear their side would lose and are making the transparently absurd claim that drilling won't lower the price of oil. They're scampering to say that they would allow drilling somewhere -- mostly in places where the oil companies haven't found any oil.

There is hope.

The time may be coming when our lunatic environmental policies are swept away by a rising tide of common sense.

Can the Democratic Congress' 9% approval rating drop even farther?

"Yes, it can."

Get at least one vote in the Senate from Massachusetts for a sane energy policy by replacing John Kerry, who has consistently opposed drilling.

Polls show disaffection with Kerry and good vibes toward Jeff Beatty, his Republcan opponent in November. Before the campaign even begins, they are close to being in a statistical tie.

Help Jeff Beatty replace John Kerry in the U.S. Senate this November 4th and stick a needle into the do-what-the leadership-says Massachusetts all-Democratic congressional delegation.

Do you support drilling? Really support our men and women serving our country? Then, not only vote for, but help, Jeff Beatty With your help, he can win. Give John McCain another vote in the Senate.

Read it all.

Another day in Congress and Democrat leaders are desperately fighting to block votes that would provide relief at the gas pump for average Americans.

Democrat Majority Leader Reid and Democrat Speaker of the House Pelosi know they would lose to the Republican-led drive to bring relief to consumers and are trying to run out the clock until Congress departs for its summer vacation.

These shameful tactis are being used to prevent a defeat for Obama, who has said he wants to keep these prohibitions in place for their special interest groups. That Americans are sending hundreds of billions of dollars to hostile and unstable regimes and are paying $4 a gallon for gas doesn't seem to bother these three.

President Bush and John McCain are both demanding action from the Democratic Congress, but to no avail because of the Pelosi-Obama-Reid tactics and their control of Congress.

The upward pressure on oil prices is caused by rising world-wide consumption and limited growth in supplies. Yet at least 65% of America's undiscovered, recoverable oil, and 40% of its natural gas, is hostage to the Congressional drilling moratorium.

The Democratic leadership is trying to smother any awareness of their responsibility for high prices.

Read Democrats Against Drilling

A lot has been made of T. Boone Pickens building hundreds of windmills in the wind corrider running from Texas up to Oklahoma as if that were the sole answer to the enegy crisis. Pickens has said we can't drill our way out the crisis and that was construed by some meaning "Don't bother with new drilling." Not so.

Pickens told CNN that neither Presidential candidate has gone far enough in advocating the exploitation of our domestic oil resources (HT: Power Line):

BLITZER: What about drilling offshore? There's a debate. As you know, McCain says, yes, go ahead and drill off the coasts of Florida and California. Obama says, no. You're an oilman. What do you say?

PICKENS: OK. McCain says, OK off the East and West Coasts. I say East, West Coast and ANWR. Get it all. I mean, to get off of foreign oil, that is the enemy. Get everything you can get. You cannot drill your way out of it. But you're drilling, and whatever you are able to find and put into the domestic system will help us. But you -- you aren't going to be able to find enough to take care of all the imports that we have.

BLITZER: What about nuclear?

PICKENS: Nuclear, fine, do it. Anything in America, do it, and get off of foreign oil.

McCain is for drilling offshore and for nuclear power. Obama opposes both. ANWR should be added to the drilling program. Pickens is right: Use them all, drilling, wind, solar, nuclear, biofuels, coal. And if the Rocky Mountains shale oil yields the estimated 500 to 800 billion barrels, domestic oil can replace all foreign overseas oil. (Our friends Canada and Mexico are solid suppliers, though Mexico's fields appear to be in decline.)

A close ally of John McCain Medal of Honor holder Bud Day said that he would fight Islamic supremacism in America. He said "Muslim have said either we kneel, or they're going to kill us." He wasn't about to do that or advise anybody to do that and he was sure John McCain wasn't going to, either.

There was a big uproar from the Islamic supremacist organizations in the U.S., the Saudi-linked CAIR (Council on American-Islamic Relations) prominent among them.

Trouble is, the statement was accurate.

The Muslim Brotherhood in the United States is, according to a Brotherhood operative, engaged in a “grand jihad” aimed at “eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and ‘sabotaging’ its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and God’s religion is made victorious over all other religions.”

And who are those objecting?

CAIR, of course, was in 2007 named an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation Hamas terror funding case, and has had several of its officials arrested and convicted on terrorism-related charges.

If those organizations are supportive of the U.S. Constitution and are not intent on having it replaced by Islamic law one day, they should not have taken offense but affirmed thier desire to defeat Islamic imperialsm.

In a sane world, instead of taking offense, Islamic spokesmen in the U.S. would have been assuring reporters that they were working energetically within Muslim communities against those who wished to make non-Muslims kneel. But sanity is at a premium in the public debate on Islamic jihad today.

McCain's supporter Medal of Honor recipient Bud Day was dead on.

Democrat leaders Obama, Reid and Pelosi, John Kerry and the entire Democrat Massachusetts congressional delegation do not feel your pain.

To achieve energy self-sufficiency for the sake of national security and reasonable prices, the U.S. will be looking at many different sources. There are many promising technologies in development which will be economically practical with oil prices higher than $60 or so a barrel.

No one can be sure how long it will be before alternatives are developed to a commercial level and the necessary infrastructure is in place to make utilization possible. For example, shifting motor vehicle propulsion from liquids to electricity will require an enormous build-up in generating facilities. New power plants take years to permit and build, nuclear power plants longest of all.

There will be a demand for oil and oil derivates and substitutes for years to come, no matter what alternative energy sources are developed. Airplanes will require jet fuel of some sort, for example.

The more fuel the U.S. can develop on its own – or obtain from friendly sources in our hemisphere such as Canada, Mexico and Brazil, the safer the U.S. will be. There are tremendous oil resources available off the coasts of the U.S. and in Alaska that can and should be opened up to environmentally responsible oil development.

Because of recent technological advances, oil shale in the Rocky Mountains may be the biggest prize of all -- triple the proven reserves of Saudi Arabia. It is estimated that 1.5 trillion barrels of oil can be recovered from shale in the U.S. Here, too, as with offshore and Alaska, there is a Democrat moratorium in place that needs to be ended.

Republicans led by John McCain have concluded for reasons of national energy security and to bring relief to American consumers of oil and its derivatives, including gasoline, home heating oil and jet fuel, there are areas in the U. S. in which new oil development, which is blocked by congressional moratoriums, should be allowed.

These forbidden areas include the continental shelves off the west and east coasts of the U.S., parts of the Gulf of Mexico and oil shale lands in the Rocky Mountains. Democrats oppose all such efforts to open up new oil development in these areas and are blocking votes in the House and Senate to allow it.

Also at issue is a particular tract of land in but not part of the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) -- 2000 acres out of 19 million acres – known as 10-02. 10-02 was excluded from the Refuge in the original law setting up the refuge in 1980 and designated for oil development; it is not classified legally as wilderness or refuge. Exploration and oil development have been barred in ANWR since the 1980s.

Investors Business Daily - Ramirez

Obama's all-consuming ego is becoming more and more obvious. When he finally disowned his 20-year spiritual mentor, white-America hating Jeremiah Wright, he so not because of Wright's accusation about the government spreading AIDS among blacks or for "God Damn America," but because Wright, by saying Obama was just another politician, had "disrespected" him. What struck us then about Obama, as we observed in a post on June 9th, "It's all about me."

Obama's latest pretention, seeking the backdrop of Berlin's Brandenburg Gate, for a political speech was too much for the Germans and for Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer, who today writes about "The Audacity of Vanity."

Barack Obama wants to speak at the Brandenburg Gate. He figures it would be a nice backdrop. The supporting cast -- a cheering audience and a few fainting frauleins -- would be a picturesque way to bolster his foreign policy credentials. What Obama does not seem to understand is that the Brandenburg Gate is something you earn.

President Ronald Reagan earned the right to speak there because his relentless pressure had brought the Soviet empire to its knees and he was demanding its final "tear down this wall" liquidation.

When President John F. Kennedy visited the Brandenburg Gate on the day of his "Ich bin ein Berliner" speech, he was representing a country that was prepared to go to the brink of nuclear war to defend West Berlin.

Who is Obama representing? And what exactly has he done in his lifetime to merit appropriating the Brandenburg Gate as a campaign prop? What was his role in the fight against communism, the liberation of Eastern Europe, the creation of what George Bush the elder -- who presided over the fall of the Berlin Wall but modestly declined to go there for a victory lap -- called "a Europe whole and free"?

Indeed, Obama's campaign is all Obama all the time, not the future safety and prosperity of the United States.

Americans are beginning to notice Obama's elevated opinion of himself. There's nothing new about narcissism in politics. Every senator looks in the mirror and sees a president. Nonetheless, has there ever been a presidential nominee with a wider gap between his estimation of himself and the sum total of his lifetime achievements?

Obama is a three-year senator without a single important legislative achievement to his name, a former Illinois state senator who voted "present" nearly 130 times. As president of the Harvard Law Review, as law professor and as legislator, has he ever produced a single notable piece of scholarship? Written a single memorable article? His most memorable work is a biography of his favorite subject: himself.

It is a subject upon which he can dilate effortlessly. In his victory speech upon winning the nomination, Obama declared it a great turning point in history -- "generations from now we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment" -- when, among other wonders, "the rise of the oceans began to slow." As Hudson Institute economist Irwin Stelzer noted in his London Daily Telegraph column, "Moses made the waters recede, but he had help." Obama apparently works alone.

All of which leads inexorably to another question about Obama.

For the first few months of the campaign, the question about Obama was: Who is he? The question now is: Who does he think he is?

We are getting to know. Redeemer of our uninvolved, uninformed lives. Lord of the seas. And more. As he said on victory night, his rise marks the moment when "our planet began to heal." As I recall -- I'm no expert on this -- Jesus practiced his healing just on the sick. Obama operates on a larger canvas.

To read this devastatingly accurate critique in full, click here.

It has been suggested that in his imperial "Do you know who I am?" ascendency to the Democratic nomination for president Obama actually bears an eerie resemblance to the last Democratic nominee for president, Massachusetts' own John Kerry.

Kerry, who once again is resurfacing in Massachusetts now that it's election season, is hoping to avoid being retired to his wife's estate in Pennsylvania this November at the hands of former Army Delta Force Officer Jeff Beatty, who has just been endorsed by Vets for Freedom. (We all know what Kerry's Swift Boat colleagues thought.)

The iconoclastic Boston Herald reporter Howie Carr mused on his years covering Kerry back in 2004. Some things never change, so it's worth a trip down memory lane.

THE REAL JOHN KERRY

HOWIE CARR
February 5, 2004
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One off the surest ways to get the phones ringing on any Massachusetts talk-radio show is to ask people to call in and tell their John Kerry stories. The phone lines are soon filled, and most of the stories have a common theme: our junior senator pulling rank on one of his constituents, breaking in line, demanding to pay less (or nothing) or ducking out before the bill arrives.

The tales often have one other common thread. Most end with Sen. Kerry inquiring of the lesser mortal: "Do you know who I am?"

Continue reading ""DO YOU KNOW WHO I AM?""

Posted by Republican on Friday, July 18, 2008 at 8:17 AM
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