With Gas Prices Burning Our Wallets, Enviro-Statists Push To Stifle Crude Supply

Many families, including mine, are parking their cars in the driveway this weekend because the gas prices are TOO DAMN HIGH.  Middle income families are spending a record level of their income filling up their tanks, burning up disposable income.  In other words, we can't have as much fun as we used to because we spend all of our cash driving to work, choir recitals, baseball practice, and the grocery store.  There is really little that we can do to alter our driving habits (I can't really afford not to drive to my job), aside from not doing any extra driving.

Our country's lack of a long-term energy policy has left us with dwindling supplies and a heavy reliance on foreign sources of crude.  One would think that we would seek to find any additional supply possible in an effort to lower the price at the pump.

Most people don't realize where we get most of our foreign oil.  Is it Iraq?  Nope.  Saudi Arabia?  Nope.  Venezuela?  No way.

Canadian Tar Sands

BLAME CANADA!  That's right, most of our oil is imported from our friendly neighbor to the North.  There are plans in the works to build a pipeline from Alberta, Canada to our refineries in Texas.  Not only would this DOUBLE our supply coming from our biggest importer, it will create thousands of jobs in the process.  This Conservative Trucker likes the fact that thousands of Americans will have well paying jobs and that we will have a far lower dependency on oil from the Middle East.

However, the enviro-statists in Congress are looking to stifle this important project.  Matthew Daly of the Associated Press actually wrote a pretty good article on the subject: Fight over Canadian oil goes to Congress.

Democrats questioned whether the Koch Brothers are standing to profit from the pipeline.  They won't, but what does it matter if they do?  It's not surprising that those scary conservative Koch Brothers would be investigated by political opponents about making evil profits from a pipeline.

There is another insidious group looking to stop the pipeline called Friends of the Earth, whose sole purpose is to take us back to the day of the horse and buggy.  This merry band of global warming alarmists have filed suit against the State Department to halt the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline:

Friends of the Earth is fighting to secure the Obama administration's veto on a massive proposed pipeline called the Keystone XL, which would carry extremely polluting tar sands oil from Canada through six U.S. states to refineries in Texas. The State Department is in charge of reviewing the project, and we are working to hold the agency accountable to its responsibility to conduct a thorough and rigorous environmental review of the project -- to pay attention to the concerns of people, not just Big Oil and its lobbyists.

The fact of the matter is that the technology used to construct a modern pipeline makes the likelihood of an environmental disaster of any significant magnitude slim to none.  It is obvious that the only thing these kooks want is for everyone to drive a tin can that you can plug into a wall.

In my humble opinion, it would be prudent for all of us to contact our representatives and tell them to support the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline in order to increase our supply of oil and create American jobs.

Mark Levin Gets Mopped By Tom Woods On War Powers

I'm not going to get much into the commentary on this one.  Mark Levin (who I'm a fan of by the way) makes a pretty weak and incoherent argument on presidential war powers and gets thrashed by libertarian columnist and author Tom Woods.  Simply put, Levin thinks that it is proper for a President to start offensive wars without a formal Declaration of War.  Tom Woods makes a very succinct and coherent argument to the contrary.  Woods challenged Levin to back up his position with evidence that the Federalists approved of the President entering non-defensive conflicts without consulting Congress.

Disappointingly, Mark changes the subject and does his name-calling thing.  Link to the debate below:

Tom Woods / Mark Levin War Powers Debate

A well thought out piece by Tom Woods on the subject:

The Phony Argument For Presidential War Powers

The Morality of Profit

So many in our society today regard profit as evil.  The contrary is true.  Profit is one of the highest of virtues in our capitalistic system because it involves the free exchange of value.  The person buying a product views said product at a higher value than he is willing to give up for it, and voluntarily, without coercion, expresses that value through the exchange of currency to the seller.  Profit shows that the producer created more value than it cost to produce the product.

This video by the Atlas Network also shows which types of profits are gained at the expense of others, i.e. those that profit via government special interests and subsidies.

Tim Pawlenty: Run of the Mill, Big Government Lib

Tim Pawlenty put his hat in the ring for the GOP nomination for President, just following Mitch Daniels's announcement that he will not seek the nomination.  Already, Pawlenty seems to be the darling of Fox News, Newsmax and other so-called conservative news outlets.  They are touting him as the only candidate capable of dethroning our current monarch.  Pawlenty is making his rounds on the talk radio circuit in an effort to garner the favor of conservatives nationwide.  He will most likely serve the conservative base of the GOP a heaping serving of red meat.

Conservatives like me are clamoring for a dependable, solid, principled candidate with a record of conservatism to stand on, with the intellect to convey and articulate the message that will win the hearts and minds of the undecided.  Tim Pawlenty would have you think he is that guy.  With establishment backing and a pile of cash, he could convince many.

Tim Pawlenty:  Sam's Club Conservative

Once under consideration as a running mate for John McCain in 2008, Michael Tanner of the Cato Institute uncovers his true big government, nanny state record:

Pawlenty, who reportedly coined the term “Sam’s Club conservative” to describe his political philosophy, has been an economic populist and big-spender generally. Among other things, he:

• Supported government subsidized health care for all children as the first step toward universal health insurance, and opposed President Bush’s veto of a Democratic bill that would have expanded the State Children’s Health Insurance program (SCHIP) to families earning as much as $83,000 per year;
• Supports Massachusetts-style health care reform, including a “health care exchange” and an individual mandate;
• Has called for banning all prescription drug advertizing, and seeks government imposed price controls for drugs offered through Medicare;
• Proposed a $4000 per child preschool program for low-income children;
• Pushed a statewide smoking ban smoking ban in workplaces, restaurants and bars;
• Increased the state’s minimum wage;
• Imposed some of the most aggressive and expensive renewable energy mandates in the country;
• Was an ardent supporter of the farm bill;
• Received only a “C” ranking on Cato’s 2006 Governor’s Report Card, finishing below such Democrats as Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack and tied with Democratic Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell.

Here is another scathing blog entry that links to a Wall Street Journal article authored by Jason Lewis in which Pawlenty is quoted:

"The era of small government is over . . . government has to be more proactive, more aggressive."
-- Tim Pawlenty, 2006.

When he raised the cigarette tax in 2005 by $.75 per pack, he called it a "health impact fee".  Are you kidding?  He clearly engages in doublespeak like any other typical politician.  Call it what it is, the least you can do is be honest about it.  I'm sure he will call additional spending "investments".

There's his cap and trade ideas, his support for subsidies of all kinds (renewable energy, stadiums, farm bills), all of which are an irrefutable part of Pawlenty's record.

Oh, and I'm going to pistol whip the next moron who calls him T-PAW. 

Let's be serious.  This is not the guy we need to lead us out of this quagmire.  We need someone firmly committed to reducing the size and scope of government, adherent to Constitutional principles, and able to convey the message effectively.  Remember, it's really the undecided vote that will decide the election.

Socialist Bernie Sanders Displays Hilarious Irony

Socialist Bernie Sanders despises capitalism except when it benefits him personally.

Courtesy of Human Events and Jason Mattera:

 

Newt, Ya Done Goofed

Newt: The Left loves you now.

Take a look at how the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee is playing Newt Gingrich's incredible gaffe in which he called Paul Ryan's plan for Medicare "right wing social engineering":

Send Newt a "Thank You"

Thank you Newt for giving them fundraising ammo.

Obama: Dictator of the World

Our Dear Leader

President Obama says that Israel must return to its pre-1967 borders with land swaps in order to secure a two-state peace deal with Palestine (who has never been a "State" in their entire existence).  Of course, Israel is called on to make the land sacrifices, while the Palestinians are left to make no sacrifices whatsoever. 

The apparent goal is to give Israel, a sovereign nation, indefensible borders.  It would leave the middle of Israel only 8 miles wide:

The deeper question is this:  What makes President Obama think he can tell a sovereign nation half a world away where their borders should be?  When was the United States granted jurisdiction to make such calls?  Why don't we demand Jordan give up land while we're at it?  It's preposterous to think that we can go around the world and build nations, enter conflicts that don't affect us at all, and tell nations where their borders should be. 

The sovereign people of Israel have a right to self-preservation.  They live in a rough neighborhood, but they know how to take care of themselves.  Leave them be to resolve their own issues.   

Jefferson's Missing Paragraph Proves Founders Understood the Inequity of Slavery

Thomas Jefferson

 You constantly hear from the Left that the Founding Fathers were a gang of bigoted slave owners that could not possibly really believe in every man's unalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.  Well, as usual, they are wrong.  While the Founders were not perfect (no one is), and Jefferson himself owned slaves, they were thinkers.  They understood that slavery was incompatible with liberty. 

The following passage was written by Thomas Jefferson but omitted from the Declaration of Independence at the the insistence of the delegates from Georgia and South Carolina:

"He [King George] has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life and liberty in the personal of a distant people who never offended him, captivating and carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation hither. This piratical warfare, the opprobrium of INFIDEL powers, is the warfare of the CHRISTIAN king of Great Britain. Determined to keep open a market where MEN should be bought and sold, he has prostituted the negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or restrain this execrable commerce. And that this assemblage of horrors might want to no fact of distinguished dye, he is now exciting those very people to rise in arms amongst us, and to purchase that liberty of which he has deprived them, by murdering the people on whom he also obtruded them: thus paying off former crimes committed against the LIBERTIES of one people, with crimes he urges them to commit against the LIVES of another."

That is pretty strong language from a man that is branded by the Left as a slave-owning bigot that didn't care for the liberties of an entire race of people.  It took an awful lot of balls on Jefferson's part to even present verbiage of this nature to the Continental Congress.

Jefferson and the rest of the Founders understood that it would have been impossible to unite the colonies if they were to take a staunch anti-slavery stance at that point in history.  As we well know, many lost their lives later on to end the scourge of slavery. 

James Madison in Federalist Paper No 42:

"It were doubtless to be wished, that the power of prohibiting the importation of slaves had not been postponed until the year 1808, or rather that it had been suffered to have immediate operation. But it is not difficult to account, either for this restriction on the general government, or for the manner in which the whole clause is expressed. It ought to be considered as a great point gained in favor of humanity, that a period of twenty years may terminate forever, within these States, a traffic which has so long and so loudly upbraided the barbarism of modern policy; that within that period, it will receive a considerable discouragement from the federal government, and may be totally abolished, by a concurrence of the few States which continue the unnatural traffic, in the prohibitory example which has been given by so great a majority of the Union. Happy would it be for the unfortunate Africans, if an equal prospect lay before them of being redeemed from the oppressions of their European brethren!"

Many more of these quotes can be found here.  

Interesting Article Examining the Religious Right

Michael Brendan Dougherty gives an interesting look at the Religious Right, which constitutes approximately one third of GOP voters.  Dougherty goes into their unflinching support for neocon policies and their general intellectual laziness. 

http://www.amconmag.com/blog/2011/05/12/who-misleads-the-religious-right/

Correction:  Evangelical Christians make up one third of the total electorate.

Fat Stupid White People At MSNBC Cry Racism, Yet Ignore Their Own.

Ed Shultz: Fat, stupid racist.

Ed Shultz has never been accused of being too bright.  Needless to say, he is still safe.  I am no fan of Newt Gingrich, but the accusations of racism by Ed Shultz of the Ed Show, and David Gregory of Meet the Press show their own veiled racism and true bigotry. 

Via Real Clear Politics:

"Let's get to the racist part of this," MSNBC's Ed Schultz insisted on his show last night. "To put this in the context of what the culture of the south is all about."

"Newt knows exactly what he's doing," Schultz said in his explanation of why calling President Obama the "food stamp president" is racist.

"You see, being from the south, you know what these codewords are all about. To say something about food stamps is not about white folks, it's about black folks. There's no question about it," Schultz declared.

Ed says whether or not you admit Gingrich is a racist, you can't argue that his policies aren't.

"If Gingrich has his way on food stamps, you know who it's going to hurt? African-Americans. Women and children and millions of low income families," Schultz says since Republicans can't win the issues, they will have to sink to playing the … race card."

This is just laughable!  The big fat racist Ed Shultz views Gingrich's food stamp comments as racist only because he himself thinks that only black people are on food stamps.  Forget the fact that Gingrich is correct when he calls Obama the most successful food stamp President.  More people are on food stamps than ever.  Gingrich was using political rhetoric, making the point that we need more paychecks and less food stamps.  And when did Gingrich say he wanted to take away food stamps? 

According to the USDA, whom administers the food stamp program, in 2006 43% of food stamp recipients were white, while only 33% were black.  Why would you assume Gingrich was making a racist statement against blacks David Gregory and Ed Schultz?  It's because of your preconceived notion that only black people are dependent on food stamps.

It's infuriating that the left-wing vermin in the media has to stoop to such low-level tactics, but they do it everyday.  Anything to protect their Savior and advance their agenda.

A New Conservative, Liberty Driven Blog

I want to take a moment to introduce myself.  My name is John.  I'm a citizen statesman from the Great State of Indiana.  I'm 32 years years old and married with two children; a 14 year old boy and a 4 year old girl.  Most of my time is spent working as a truck driver.  My wife recently lost her job, and we are both working together to get a home business started that is directly related to the job she left.  Things are a little crazy at the moment.  I thought it would be a good release to post my thoughts on a blog.