As I’ve written before, I was a very uninformed young person for the first half of my life. I remember watching a movie in the Florida State student union about how Campbell’s Soup treated workers unfairly. I quickly decided to start my own boycott. Inexplicably, they somehow survived my boycott. I once went to the Tallahassee airport to try and meet Gary Hart before his presidential campaign imploded and I also sat on the stage when Jessie Jackson gave a speech during his 1984 race for the White House. As a Political Science undergraduate one of my professors, a self described Bolshevik, explained the great successes of the Soviet Union thus: Their economic and political system had to be superior to ours, otherwise how could they produce the weapon systems we were so scared of? Made sense to me… There were probably numerous other episodes but my brain has apparently, thankfully, forgotten most of them.
The reason I mention this is because we all did things during our college years that we might want to forget. Luckily for me, none of my nonsense was captured on video. Not so lucky for our President. The video of him encouraging a gathering of Harvard students to embrace the man and the message of the late leftist Dr. Derrick Bell has been making the rounds of the Internet. Although Democrats (and most of the media) suggest this is nothing more than a student showing support for the first black tenured professor at Harvard Law School, I’m fairly sure the President would just as soon not have to deal with the issue during an election campaign.
Luckily Americans recognize that by the time most of us reach middle age, the explorations, experimentations, the ill advised exhortations have been tempered by time and real world experience. Most of course does not mean all, and while one might be inclined to offer a pass to the President for what said in college two decades ago, the same cannot be said for his equally ill advised words two weeks ago.
Of course I’m not talking about Professor Bell. I’m talking about President Obama’s “Energy Speech” delivered last month. Aside from the fact that he makes a number of factual errors, the biggest problem is that the President doesn’t seem to learn from actual experience.
The President seems determined to run the United States off an economic cliff for the sake of his belief in the scam known as “Green Energy”. Not only has he wasted billions of taxpayer’s money on boondoggles like Solyndra, the very expensive and nonworking Fisker-Karma and the rapidly shrinking National Renewable Energy Lab, but more importantly he has added, literally, $243 billion a year to what Americans pay for gasoline. (130 billion gallons a year X $1.86 – the increase in the price of gas since Obama took office) That’s more than 10 times what Americans spend on the NFL, Hollywood movies and in Starbucks annually! Of course there are other unseen costs Americans must bear as businesses have to wrap their increased energy and transportation costs into everything they offer, be it canned tomatoes or package delivery, but those are too numerous to discuss here.
The problem is not a lack of accessible energy as the President suggests, rather the problem is his laser like focus on the illusion of economically viable “renewable” or “sustainable” energy to the explicit detriment of the demonstrably viable and abundant energy sources that fueled the 20th Century. More concerning is that he maintains that focus in the face of the repeated failures of virtually every aspect of the Green Energy hoax:
From subsidized windfarms that are now being subsidized further to stop operating to General Motors halting production of its heavily subsidized Volt because no one wants to buy it to the $50 light bulb that won the Department of Energy’s prize for a “green” but affordable light bulb. Add to that the fact that Green jobs are largely an expensive mirage and you have the makings of what must be a parody of a plan to actually revive the economy. Then when you think about the closing of actual, functioning plants across the country due to increased regulation, and the quixotic support for foreign fossil fuel exploration, it seems like more than just a parody, it’s like he’s mocking the American people.
But, no, really, his intentions are good… Well, even if they were, one must remember Einstein’s definition of insanity: Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. I don’t think the President is insane, which leads me to the conclusion that he’s doing the same thing over and over again expecting the same results. He believes so strongly that he is right about his green agenda that he simply refuses to believe that things will not turn his way eventually. He’s a modern day Walter Duranty, where billions of dollars are being wasted and millions of jobs are being destroyed yet somehow he doesn’t see it, or doesn’t care. Like Duranty’s reporting of the economic miracle that was the USSR while Stalin used an iron fist to inflict bloodshed and starvation across the Ukraine and other areas of the Soviet Union, President Obama’s words increasingly ring hollow. More and more often when Americans hear “We can’t just drill our way to lower gas prices” or “We’re focused on (oil) production” or “The only real solution to helping families at the pump in the medium and long term is clean energy. That’s how we’ll save families money” they recognize they are being lied to in a way that seems almost impossible to believe coming from a President.
Perhaps the President thinks the government’s education industrial complex has eradicated the critical thinking or skepticism gene from the average American so that they will simply believe something because it’s delivered by a man with a smile and an air of confidence. As much damage as government schools do, I don’t think they’ve succeeded in that yet.
At the end of the day most Americans are willing to look past the defiant words of a college student looking to make his mark on the world. I think they are less likely however to accord the same deference for equally nonsensical words uttered by someone old enough to have learned that the world does not actually operate like the ivory towers of academia, where theories and speeches and a lack of real world consequences rule the day. As much of a headache his words at Harvard might be causing for the President, his more current words are causing a much bigger one for the American people. This will take more than aspirin to fix…
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As I’ve documented before, America’s number one export is now gasoline. Since it’s obviously more profitable to sell our gasoline abroad than domestically, should we drill more oil so we can sell more gas to foreign countries?
@Liberal1 (objectivity):
Yes, Lib1, you’ve “documented” your information here many, many times. And each time, Mata comes and gives the factual information showing your opinion based on that one fact is quite wrong.
But, let’s assume your opinion is on the right track for a moment. What in the world does that opinion have to do with the posting above? Answer: Not a damn thing. You post this same opinion, based on one “fact”, in every article or posting having to do with energy and/or oil, regardless of the points being made in the article.
So, the question then becomes: Do you even read the articles? Or, do you even care what the points in the articles are? I’m not sure of the answers to those questions, mainly because I don’t follow the same thought processes as you(and thank God for that!)
In regards to the article itself, your posting does nothing to address why Obama, and I assume you as well, continue to support “green energy” boondoggles, such as Solyndra, expecting that the next greatest
ideahoax will actually work. And rather than achieve some real energy dependence, his failures continue to make our country ever more dependent upon foreign energy sources. Obama has launched a war on fossil fuel use in this country, from the use of coal, to oil, and natural gas, and his only effective weapon thus far has been an overbearing federal government. His “weapons” of “green energy” have been nothing more than shams on the American people, and Obama continues to pour OUR money into these money pits, including the unbelievable idea of paying wind farms NOT to produce electricity. Does that make any sense to you? No, don’t answer that one. It doesn’t matter.Einstein is commonly considered a ‘late-bloomer.’
He was 23 when one of his first physics papers was published in a prestigious physics journal.
He was 27 when he got his PhD.
Obama was 28 when he hugged and praised Bell.
Bell was on his required reading list when he lectured law at Harvard some time later.
He’s still as full of the same stupid beliefs as he was then.
Take Einstein’s and physics principles that you cannot create energy without expending more energy.
Compare that theory to the oil where the EARTH itself has expended the energy over centuries of pressure VS Obama’s stupid idea that we can build stuff that creates useable energy at a competitive price and THEN you’ll see why Einstein was a genius and Obama is an idiot.
Liberal 1(obfuscation). Your point and counterpoints have been debunked before. Diesel was once a leading export. Natural gas could be. Everything depends on demand. Balance of trade is critical to the strength of the US Dollar. Exports are needed.
Fish, barrel, rifle, and some assembly required. Too easy.
It may be that Obama is using a Cloward-Piven strategy to run the country into the ground. At that point, people might be more receptive to his socialist agenda. Operating in violation of well established principles of science and economics just doesn’t make sense otherwise.
@johngalt and @Oil guy from Alberta…. you’re not working with a big thinker here. Maybe one of these days, the lib-zero-upstairs types will figure out that what you do with the refined crude products (especially since it’s getting backed up in OK because of… ahem… the Keystone pipeline delays) hasn’t got squat to do with the price of a barrel on the global market. That’s like saying the prices of steaks are going up because they are being exported, when the real problem is you’re running out cows in the world to make into steaks….
Truly the big picture of how the market works, and what affects it, just overwhelms the myopic vision of the gullible.
BTW, libzero claiming “documented” is rather a joke… one link to a lame “Common Peoples News Service” summary and a few links the “old man” host apparently didn’t read, and another to a Yahoo news article. Wow… some pretty heavy reading there. LOL
Of course no one disputes that US exports of refined fuel have increased. Why? Because it has nothing to do with the price of a barrel, which is what dictates the gas prices to begin with but has everything to do with why Americans aren’t buying fuel.
@MataHarley:
Oh, we understand Lib1 is not a big thinker, Mata. I have this picture of him running back to Huffpo, DailyKos, or DU and crying, “See, I told them that line again and they still didn’t believe me. You guys gotta give me another talking point to work with here.”
Stupid and ignorant is no way to go through life, and I am continually amazed at the number of liberals who display those two attributes every day. One would think, given Lib1’s stated advanced age, that he should have grown out of being so myopic on the issues, and that with that many years in the real world, common sense would have taken root at some point.
I think he is insane.
Why is a gallon of gas 91 cents in Saudi Arabia? Why is it 78 cents a gallon in Kuwait?
http://money.cnn.com/pf/features/lists/global_gasprices/
Is it because of the leftist lie that gas is fungible and therefore the same price everywhere? Hell I live in Oklahoma and gas is about a $3.50 but I see on the coasts gas costs around $4 to $6.
Why do leftists claim that the ‘world market’ means gas is the same price everywhere everytime?
I guess I should trust leftists rather than my own eyes and experience.
Damn I’d be happy with Moscow’s $2.10 a gallon
Over at I Own the World, Einstein has another theory:
http://iowntheworld.com/blog/?p=124474
@Recklessprocess: Gas is subsidized not taxed in Saudi Arabia.
VINCE
h,
you touch on a very important fact on just about 3 words, which made me remember another fact,
you said OBAMA LASER LIKE focus on …. and it made me remember that he had taken drugs, in his younger days maybe older days too, once you are ingrained in it, and what has been notice of a drug user past or present is the laser focus on a point they adopt and get entangle in it as it is for them as a most important thing to get done in their life, regardless if it is a stupid view from the rational people but for him it is view as a right thing to achieve and they don’t care how much it cost especially if the money come not from their pockets but from the taxpayers, it reenforce his pursue of making his view a reality, and same for his SPENDING SPREE, HE MIGHT HAVE DONE IT BEFORE HE WAS PRESIDENT TOO AS A CARELESS HABIT,
that was observed by many who had someone around them on drug, and the most part is that they are so stock on it like the glue stick on an item, and it is a feature of most drug abuser meaning those who take it at a young age and longer, this sound like OBAMA when he give a speech on a particular subject like the green energy, which he is really stuck on, it’s visible, and he get anger spree if he is debate on his words, that is another sign too.
bye