The Blog @ Spolitics

Democrats on Oil: Crude Lies

With oil prices through the top of the barrel and Americans clamoring for more exploration and drilling at home, Democrats like Nancy Pelosi and Barbara Boxer are spouting some pretty worn and lame talking points. 

First there’s the “We can’t drill our way out of this” canard.  Are we supposed to believe that Boxer & Pelosi, et al know beyond any doubt the exact amount of oil reserves hidden underneath the entire U.S. and our Outer Continental Shelf without any exploration?  And this is the party that wants to nationalize America’s oil industry.  For what purpose?  To shut it down? 

Try and reconcile this with their other talking point, that there are plenty of ”unused leases” where the oil companies could drill for oil but for some reason, they just don’t want to.  If Democrats like Boxer are to be believed, rather than drill in the U.S., oil companies prefer to drill in places like Nigeria amidst frequent militant violence a greedy government trying to seize more of their profits (okay, the last points isn’t too different from our Democrat congress).

And of course, to accept ”unused leases” excuse as valid, you have to believe that there’s oil in every single lease, so much of it that there’s no need to open up more territory.  If that’s true, then why do they say we can’t we drill our way out this?  Or are there simply leases where the companies did not discover oil, in which case, we would need to open up more territory for exploration.  The Democrats’ own talking points undermine each other. 

But it’s even worse than that.  One look at Boxer’s own state of California tells the true story: they’re not drilling on those leases because environmentalists and the state governments are suing to block them from drilling.  It takes a disgusting amount of Gaul to sue these companies to stop them from drilling and then blame them for not drilling.  With Americans are getting whacked by higher gas prices, is this the best the Democrats can offer?

Another One Under the Bus…Scarlett Johansson

Senator Barack Obama sure does have a habit of tossing his supporters under the bus.  His latest victim is actress Scarlett Johansson who campaigns for the presidential candidate.  In an article in Politico, Johansson described exchanging emails with Obama:

His replies have been thoughtful, she said, more than a brief line or two; on the ABC debate, he responded that the questioning was “difficult” and he was being pounded on “one silly question after another.” 

Johansson is somewhat shocked that he keeps up their back-and-forth correspondence. “You’d imagine that someone like the senator who is constantly traveling and constantly ‘on’ — how can he return these personal e-mails?” she asks. “But he does, and in his off-time I know he also calls people who have donated the minimum to thank them. Nobody sees it, nobody talks about it, but it’s incredible.” She adds, “I feel like I’m supporting someone, and having a personal dialogue with them, and it’s amazing.”

When asked about it, Obama responded in such a way that the actress came off looking dishonest if not delusional:

But speaking to reporters aboard his campaign plane, Obama said the actress doesn’t have his personal email address. “She sent one email to Reggie, who forwarded it to me,” Obama said, referring to his 26-year-old personal assistant, Reggie Love. “I write saying, ‘thank you Scarlett for doing what you do,’ and suddenly we have this email relationship.”

Perhaps Johansson was just telling a well-intentioned lie to show Obama as more engaged with his supporters than he actually is.  But Obama’s response also stinks of parsing.  He said she didn’t have his “personal” email address, but what about a work of campaign address?  And if he responded, she would have that email address going forward.  It seems he’s not being totally forthcoming and would prefer to just snark it off.   

One likely explanation that wouldn’t require anyone to be a liar or insane is that Obama has a staffer who has access to certain email accounts and answers emails for him.  Johansson could have written to a campaign email address or his senate email account and the staffer responded on Obama’s behalf.  But if that were the case, Obama would have known about the practice which would mean that rather than explain the situation and reveal the charade, he let Scarlett look the fool and end up as roadkill on Obama Way. 

Allies to Obama: Stop Freaking Us Out

Democrat presidential candidate Barack Obama said Republicans will try to make voters fear him because of his inexperience (and his race, but that’s another issue).  Why Obama considers his lack of experience a cheap shot is mind-boggling, but I digress.  Turns out there’s a much more urgent need to be worried about an Obama presidency: policies — at least as far as our allies are concerned.

Obama keeps giving our enemies reasons to cheer and our allies reasons to worry.  He’s promising pow-wows with Chavez, Kim Jong-Il, and the leadership of Cuba and Iran.  Hamas once voiced their preference for him as well as Moqtada al-Sadr’s Sadr movement.  Meanwhile Obama has spooked the Canadians with his anti-NAFTA tirades and calls for unilateral revisions and has the Europeans concerned about free trade as well.  He’s threatened to ditch trade deals with South Korea and Columbia and revisit others.  And, he has Iraq wringing their hands about a premature withdrawal of U.S. troops.

Most recently he has the EU worried about their efforts to stop Iran from building a nuclear bomb.  They fear Obama will hamstring Security Council resolutions that offer financial and diplomatic incentives to Iran if they suspend enrichment with his promise to sit down for a private confab with Iran’s leadership without preconditions.

“Dropping a unanimous Security Council condition would simply be interpreted by Iran and America’s allies as unconditional surrender, and America’s friends would view this as confirmation of America’s basic unreliability,” said François Heisbourg, a Paris-based military analyst with the International Institute for Strategic Studies. “A hell of a way to start a presidential term.”

So much for all this talk about how Obama is going to improve our standing in the world.  From the looks of it, it may be that Obama will have our allies longing for the good ole days of George W. Bush.