obAMATEUR Continues His LIE – He Is Responsible For Increased Drilling

tiredoflibbs76 Comments

obAMATEUR stepped up his rhetoric on oil production and gas prices. Rightly or wrongly, the American people are blaming Obama for the cost of their latest fill-up. So obAMATEUR’s solution? Mislead the American people and pepper them with over-the-top rhetoric. For example, yesterday he tried to emphasize his (non-existent) drilling record: “So do not tell me that we’re not drilling. We’re drilling all over this country. There are a few spots we’re not drilling. We’re not drilling in the national mall. We’re not drilling at your house.”

Clever. But unfortunately those are not the FACTS. Just last weekend, Obama addressed the nation and stated that “[u]nder my Administration, oil production in America is at an eight-year high. We’ve quadrupled the number of operating oil rigs, and opened up millions of acres for drilling.”

Once again, let’s dispel these myths. (Myths, hell. They’re LIES.)

Oil production is at an eight-year high?

The US Energy Information Administration has finally put this one to bed. After looking at data from 2003 to 2011, production on federal lands under obAMATEUR was lower than all but one year of the Bush administration, and it hit rock-bottom in 2011. In fact, production alone dropped by 6% from 2010-2011 to its lowest level in nine years.

We’ve quadrupled the number of oil rigs?

I guess it is easy to claim that you’ve increased something, when you literally put a halt to it early in your administration. In 2010, after the BP oil spill, take a look at this gimmick pulled by the obAMATEUR administration … from the Institute of Energy Research, “The obAMATEUR administration would like you to think that major strides have been taken to increase drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. But, that is hardly the case. The administration has been touting the four drilling permits it has issued, but in reality, but these are not new permits—they have only reissued four permits that it suspended last year.” Also remember that the obAMATEUR administration held just one offshore lease sale in all of fiscal year 2011. President Bush’s energy plan called for five.

We’ve opened up millions of acres for drilling …

Under “the one we have been waiting for”, the federal government has leased less than half of the offshore acres that President Clinton did. In 2010 the federal government issued the lowest number of onshore leases since 1984. Our Dear Ruler is also blocking access to 19 billion barrels of oil in the Pacific and Atlantic coasts and the eastern Gulf of Mexico, another 10 billion barrels estimated in the Chukchi Sea off the Alaskan coast, and another 10 billion barrels of oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve.

You are being LIED to and you drones just suck it up like ambrosia.

While Bush was President, the Democrats (and their willing propagandists in the media) never failed to bludgeon him with the full blame for rising gas prices.  Pelosi (and her mindless regurgitating drones) maintained that it was the “Two Oil Men in the White House”.  Now that they are in charge and their “man” is in the White House the LIES and the EXCUSES fly – “the President has no direct control of the oil/gasoline market”.  But as I said, Bush was totally responsible, while their “leader”, who has no tangible and realistic energy policy, is completely blameless.  The libs favorite talking point is that it will be a decade before drilling can have an impact and in the same breath, their “green and renewable” energy is a viable solution all of which is more than a decade away from fruition.

Again, you are being LIED to drones, why to you regurgitate the dumbed down talking points?  In your case, ignorance is definitely BLISS.

Hat tip: Neal Boortz

Another Victim of Bullying Lady Gaga Doesn’t Care About

Matt Margolis11 Comments

This story of a 14-year-old girl who committed suicide last week hasn’t received the same traction in the national media as other similar stories.

A 14-year-old girl whose Facebook page says she loves ” all my haterz” has committed suicide after enduring two years of bullying by her female classmates, her family claims.

Eden Wormer, an eighth grader at Cascade Middle School in Vancouver, Wash., hanged herself Wednesday.

The girl’s family told ABC News affiliate KATU that she committed suicide after two years of being bullied by girls in her class. Wormer’s older sister, Audri, told the station that Eden changed her appearance several times in an effort to fit in, and begged her older sister not to report the bullying because she thought it would only make the problem worse.

Lady Gaga isn’t renewing her calls to make bullying a hate crime, as she did in the wake of Jamey Rodemeyer’s suicide last year. The difference? Do you really need more than one guess? Rodemeyer was apparently bullied for being gay. The girl in the story linked above, was, as far as is known based on report, not gay, just had problems fitting in.

Of course, I’m not saying I think bullying is an issue for the federal government, it’s not. I don’t care what the motivation is. Kids throughout our country’s history have been bullied, and perhaps modern culture exasperates the problem, and the internet gives more avenues for bullying to occur, but this is an issue for parents, teachers, and school administrators, not our members of Congress.

Ali Akbar: On Mitt Romney

thealialexander144 Comments

Before any contest was ever held, Romney was pronounced our nominee.

It bugged me. My fellow movement leaders refused to step up (except the Campaign to Defeat Barack Obama), my buddies in the press mocked me privately, and operatives shunned my name.

I lead the most prominent and largest contiengent of “Not Mitt” folks over at NotMittRomney.com. Supporters of our cause are tens of thousands strong. I’ve signed my name to Op-Eds that have ran in key states during the primary, organized phone banks against Romney, and done at least one hundred interviews pleading our case.

Funny thing happened, we were right. Romney’s policies needed some brushing up, we got the press to stop talking about national polls and start talking about delegates, and we gave Romney a blow in more than a few states.

Furthermore, I endorsed Newt Gingrich right before South Carolina. Newt would have made an excellent President. I liked Newt, not only because he’s a friend, but because he was one of the few that is willing to actually reform entitlements.

It’s over though.

I don’t want — we don’t need a brokered Convention in late August with just weeks to take on President Obama. While Romney has base problems and policies that I think could still use some brushing up, this is a fight we need to happen. We need Romney and Obama to go up against each other. We need both of these candidates to evolve and hear the cry of the people.

I still remain concerned about Romney’s role as our Party leader, his rhetorical capabilities, and how he would govern as President. Hopefully he’ll reassure me over these next weeks, because I would like to work to help defeat Barack Obama. I’ve worked in both Mississippi and Alabama (elections coming up on Tuesday) for years. I want to encourage them to end this contest. This can happen now or in May/June.

Oh, there’s a Senate we have to capture and a House we must defend. This chaos, well, it’s actually the calm before the storm. Let’s save America.

Special thanks to my entire NotMittRomney.com team and some Romney supporters: Bill Murphy, Austin James, Zac Moffatt, Saul Anuzis, and Chandler Epp for keeping your heads screwed on tight while I lobbed cannon balls at your castle.

P.S. I wasn’t as close to Andrew Breitbart as I should’ve been. We had a working relationship on a few things though. And he was always willing to talk to me about non-political things. Before his passing though, he warned us all — Barack Obama is dangerous and we must support anyone willing to go up against him. I’m not there yet Andrew, but with recent revelations I’m beginning to understand more about that danger. And it scares me. I believe in America.

Thou Shalt Not Have Strange gods…

Leo Pusateri76 Comments

Eleven million taxpayer-funded dollars.  Supposedly to help 400 people in Detroit find jobs.  Even if every one of those 4o0 people found a job, that would be $27,500 in taxpayer money spent, per job.  Ludicrous enough, no?

Well, what if only TWO (2) of those 400 people found jobs?

A chunk of an $11 million stimulus grant meant to provide low-income Detroit residents with clothing for job interviews reportedly aided just two people — far short of the 400 job-seekers the money was meant to help.

The findings were part of a new audit on the city’s Department of Human Services, according to The Detroit News.

That, my friends, comes to a cost of $5.5 MILLION dollars.  Per job.  Nice return on investment there, Barry.
Fast forward to yesterday (emphases added):

In the wake of lobbying by President Obama and Senate Democratic leaders, the Senate Thursday defeated legislation to speed up construction of a U-S.-Canadian oil pipeline.The White House victory came after the president started personally calling Democratic senators Wednesday night. The vote underscored the extent to which rising gas prices and energy supply have become a central political issue.

So, to Barack Obama, a stimulus program that costs taxpayers hundreds of millions, and which is a failure by any clear-thinking person’s standards is hailed as a success; while killing a program that creates at least 25,000 jobs, all without a dime of taxpayer money, is somehow considered a ‘victory.’

To Barack Hussein Obama, nothing can be successful; nothing can be true and real unless it is a direct machination of government. No matter how big the failure a government program is, it is still a success, because to a statist like Obama, nothing is possible, nothing is real unless it has its underpinnings in government.

To Obama, Government is reality. The government is the source of all that is good and just in the world.  The private sector is what is contrived. To Obama, the private sector is an anomaly; an abomination that must be controlled so as not to infringe upon the government’s influence in people’s lives. The god of Government is a jealous god. Thou shalt not have strange Gods before it.  Even religion itself takes a back seat to Obama’s real religion.

(image credit here)

After all, in order to appease the god of Government and to gain its good graces, one must certainly give alms:

More than half of Obama’s 47 biggest fundraisers, those who collected at least $500,000 for his campaign, have been given administration jobs. Nine more have been appointed to presidential boards and committees.

At least 24 Obama bundlers were given posts as foreign ambassadors, including in Finland, Australia, Portugal and Luxembourg. Among them is Don Beyer, a former Virginia lieutenant governor who serves as ambassador to Switzerland and Liechtenstein.

….

Obama has appointed 59 ambassadors who were not career Foreign Service officers, and of those, 40 percent were bundlers.

Welcome to the church of Obama.

God help its heretics.

On Dalliances With The Devil…

Leo Pusateri49 Comments

It seems that the White House is now dictating what Catholic Doctrine really means…and Cardinal Dolan isn’t liking it:

The White House seems to think we bishops simply do not know or understand Catholic teaching and so, taking a cue from its own definition of religious freedom, now has nominated its own handpicked official Catholic teachers.

Welcome to the almighty church of Obama… Mr. Hussein, presiding.

They told the Church what to do in Maoist China… Communist Russia, Cuba… and even killed those who wouldn’t comply and staffed churches with their ‘state approved’ clergy. Obama is a Marxist. That’s what he does. What kills me is that the liberal Catholic priests and bishops actually SUPPORTED Obama, being the useful idiots that they are, even though it was widely known that Obama would be the most pro-abortion president–ever, and that he voted THREE TIMES AGAINST the born-alive protection act. But they thought their dalliance with the devil would be worth it if they could attain their unattainable ‘social justice’ nirvana fix here on earth. The same folks who brought you “liberation theology” are the same folks who have run our seminaries for too long now; the same element of folks who tolerated pedophiles in the priesthood; the same folks who not only turned a blind-eye to Marxism but encouraged it.

Even given the above, the Catholic church acts surprised–shocked–I say– when the openly Marxist President Obama starts telling them how to run things. This is a direct result of the Catholic Church worrying too much about establishing a non-attainable ‘heaven on earth’ via ‘social justice;’ via their support of Obamacare and other neo-socialist endeavors, and not enough about what was and should continue to be their true mission– the salvation of and preparation of souls for eternal life with Christ in Heaven.

I have had contact with some ‘priests’ who during the 2008 elections knew of Obama’s pro-infanticide predilections, but chose to support him anyway because of the ‘greater good’ that would supposedly result from his proposed social programs.

It was regrettably the ‘useful-idiot’ Catholic vote that helped Barack Hussein Obama first achieve presidential power.

As a Catholic, it will be a sad day, indeed, should the Catholic vote allow Obama a second term.  It will not be a day that I left the Catholic church; rather, it will be a day that the Catholic Church left me.

The Stock Market and the Economy

Retired Spook40 Comments

A couple days ago in the Energy Open Thread, our resident progressive clown equated the stock market doubling during Obama’s term (as opposed to “tanking” at the end of Bush’s second term) to be a dynamic he wanted to see more of in a second Obama term.  I have no idea how many regulars here follow the markets closely, but I do, so I got a chuckle out of Bozo’s uninformed comment.  It also got me to thinking that the damage Obama’s and the Fed’s monetary and fiscal policies have inflicted on the average American had the makings of an interesting discussion.

In the course of my research, I ran across an op-ed from a little over a year ago that spells out in layman’s terms precisely what’s happened.

Does the United States still have a stock market?  Not really. In a real market, when there are more sellers than buyers, prices decline. And vice versa of course. That is called “price discovery”; or used to be. Since January of 2010 investors have withdrawn a net total of 81 billion dollars from U.S. stocks and funds, this week marking the 33rd consecutive week of outflows, while stock prices have staged a missile launch upward that started in mid-July.   Floyd Norris of the New York Times confirms that outflows have remained at record high levels over the last four years.  (as a side note, that outflow trajectory continued through most of 2011 as well) Some of the funds withdrawn resulted from industry insider selling, and much of that was re-invested in commodities and emerging markets. But a substantial amount, according to Charles Biderman, CEO of Trimtabs, was withdrawn by middle-class Americans to pay monthly bills.

In an unprecedented interview on CNBC, Biderman stated that the Federal Reserve is no longer denying the fact that it has been rigging U.S. markets nor is the Fed making any effort to hide it. An unrelenting and counter-intuitive rally has ensued, with stock prices gapping up at 4:00 AM night after night and never looking back. Even before the Fed initiated its POMO (Permanent Open Market Operations) injections of outright treasury buys in a program euphemistically titled “Quantitative Easing 2” (a.k.a printing money out of thin air) the Fed’s daily zero percent loans of taxpayer money to Goldman Sachs and J.P. Morgan were used almost exclusively to buy stocks – and then sell them again within minutes or even seconds. Investment banks use high frequency trading computers (HFTs) programmed to essentially steal money, one penny at a time, from any retail investor foolish enough to believe he could make money by trading or investing in stocks. Their computers, operating at speeds no human with a laptop could match, front-run orders, ensuring a profit on every trade. Wall Street investment banks have the right, unlike everyone else, to trade in increments of 1/1000 of a penny, allowing them to deny order fills by keeping the price 1/1000 of a penny below the bid. It is one of many questionable and even illegal practices engaged in by what the internet bears cartoons refer to as the “the Goldman Sack” and “the JP Morgue”.  The web cartoons have gone viral, as they say, and served to educate the uninitiated in the grand-theft-stock-market game being run by the Fed and the Wall Street gangs.

The writer concludes with this:

Where will the U.S. economy be when QE2 ends?   It will be where it is now, as the Fed’s money printing, while raising the costs of essential food and energy, has had no notable effect on job numbers or salaries. What it does do, with every uptick in the Dow Jones Industrial Average, is increase the wealth of those who are already wealthy.

To get a mental picture of just what this current crew in power has done to our monetary base, one really has to see it in chart form.  In July, 2009, Richard Anderson, Vice President of the St. Louis Fed, had this to say about the mercurial rise in the monetary base (which has continued almost uninterrupted since):

Monetary Policy Implications of Nontraditional Programs

In several speeches, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke has emphasized that nontraditional policy focuses on reducing stress in specific financial markets, that is, on credit easing. The focus is apparent in the types of securities purchased, including commercial paper, mortgage-backed securities and privately issued asset-backed securities.

Be this as it may, the programs nonetheless have greatly increased the monetary base—and portend, if not promptly reversed when economic activity revises, higher future inflation. When will confidence return to the economy, such that banks feel able to accurately assess the riskiness of loans and borrowers feel confident in their ability to repay? When confidence returns, will financial markets be roiled as the Fed reduces its assets and the monetary base? Finally, the Fed now has an additional policy instrument not previously available: the payment of interest on deposits at the Fed.5 Can it be used to forestall undesired increases in bank lending?

Recent increases in the monetary base are far greater than any previously in American history (even adjusted for the size of the economy), surely a “noble experiment” in policymaking. Will these policies be successful without accelerating inflation? The epitaph to this curious case of monetary base expansion is yet to be written.

The one truly amazing aspect of everything that’s happened in the last 3 years is that they’ve been able to keep the ball in the air as long as they have.  How much longer?  A functional crystal ball would come in real handy about now.