WingRight

All the early commentary about Sarah Palin focuses on the obvious fact that she’s a woman, evidently smart and outspoken, and a tempting choice for disgruntled Hillary supporters. Palin is also the only one of the four President/Vice Presidential candidates who has run anything bigger than a senate staff.

The most important thing that I see early on is that Gov. Palin is a big proponent of more oil drilling, including at ANWR. I take this to be an indication that McCain is going to move more toward drilling and (could it be?) away from the whole global warming/cap and trade mish-mash.

I think this is a bold, gutsy move on McCain’s part.

Tags: Climate Change, McCain, Oil by Publius
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In an editorial, Investors Business Daily reports that Russia’s Georgian adventure looks like the last straw for a lot of foreign investors. A giant capital outflow is beginning as foreign investors pull their money out of Putin Village, “fed up with the rampant militaristic nationalism, red tape, corruption and anti-investor sentiment in Vladimir Putin’s Russia.”

As I’ve blogged before, the Russian economy is balanced on a single unstable point - world oil prices. If those go down below $100 and stay there for awhile, Russia is in big trouble. The flashy oligarchs mask the fact that, even with the oil boom, Russia’s per capita GDP is just 2% above where it was when the Berlin Wall fell.

Inflation is currently running at 14%, so monetary policy is also undercutting the economy and acting as a confiscatory tax for the vast majority of Russians who aren’t oligarchs. As Robert Mugabe could tell Vladimir, once you start down the inflation path to solve your problems, you are going into a steep decline. Could Putin put giant clamps on prices and begin to control inflation? I don’t think so. The corruption is so endemic in Russia and black market profits would be so high, that massive amounts of goods would be moving through an underground economy and continuing to increase in price.

If the clamps don’t work, the Russians drink more to forget their miserable existence and the population drops even faster. If the clamps do work, wide-spread shortages of goods cause the Russians to drink more to forget their miserable existence, etc., etc., etc.

The big influx of foreign capital into oil deals has allowed Russia to paper over an inherently declining economy. Now that the foreign capital is headed back home, the truth will come out in a way that the whole world will see. I would be happy to have someone point out a society in steep demographic decline that was ever able to expand its economy in a meaningful way. I don’t think there has ever been one.

Oh, and by the way, about your Russian army, Vlad? Demographic decline means that every year, there will be fewer and fewer 18 year olds to conscript into the military. Your army is going to get much smaller in the next ten years.

Tags: Oil, Russia by Publius
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The Russians have begun Cold War 2.0 by invading Georgia. Not since 1968 have the Russians invaded a small neighboring country. The 1968 Czech invasion reprised Hungary in 1956. The Georgian invasion has followed the Czech and Hungarian patterns closely even though Georgia is visibly and vocally separate from Russia, unlike unwilling Soviet bloc members Czechoslovakia and Hungary.

Russia’s strategic trump card in 1968 that allowed it to send in tanks and troops without fear of meaningful interference by other countries was a large stockpile of nuclear weapons and intercontinental ballistic missiles sufficient to deliver those weapons anywhere in the world. While nuclear weapons still lurk in the background today, the new Russian trump card is oil and gas.

Oil and gas are even better trump cards than nuclear weapons. Firing a nuclear weapon at another country is an unarguable act of war and even threatening to do so is an extreme act. Intermittently reducing or stopping the flow of natural gas to Western Europe in the middle of the winter or raising prices far above agreed-upon levels is something Putin & Co. have done before and can repeat without that tactic being viewed as an act of war. I doubt that Germany would consider a military counter-attack on Russia if gas is shut off for a period of time.

The Reagan strategy that won Cold War 1.0 included defense spending to build a significant increase in military capacity as its centerpiece. Previous presidents had maintained U.S. strategic arms at a rough parity with the Soviets. Arms reduction talks, a popular international activity during the 60’s and 70’s, were aimed at maintaining that parity. Conventional wisdom held that the world would be safer if the arms race between the Western powers and the Soviet bloc could be slowed down.
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Tags: Energy, Environment, Liberalism, Oil by Publius
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The Democrats like to say that giving U.S. oil companies the right to drill in ANWR or offshore would mean that it would take at least 10 years before any oil actually flowed.

Why so long?

Most of the time is spent complying with environmental regulations or defending suits from the Sierra Club, Natural Resources Defense Council, etc.

Following are a couple of illustrations of the hurdles placed between the oil companies and U.S. oil by the Bureau of Land Management.

Here are some from the Forest Service (they haven’t figured out how to get forests underwater on the continental shelf, but they’re working on that)

The states get into the environmental flow chart business as well. Here’s North Carolina’s:

and California:

It’s clear to me that you can’t propose any major energy program without a flow chart, so I’ve gone ahead and put together the WingRight Lower Gas Prices Flow Chart:

Which of these processes do you think can proceed the fastest?

Tags: Energy, Liberalism, Oil by Publius
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Sometimes a picture is worth a zillion words.  Via Powerline.

Tags: Economy, Environment, Liberal Hypocrisy, Oil, Welfare by Publius
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A good post from Hugh Hewitt - Memo to the Bush Administration: If Drilling Is That Important, Act That Way via On the Other Hand (thanks for the mention!)

The Obama-Pelosi-Reid Don’t Drill Democrats aren’t budging in their opposition to seeking new oil supplies, as the electoral benefits they envision from high gas prices far outweigh their concern over the damage done to individual Americans and the U.S. economy from the oil shock. They’d rather win the presidency and expand their majorities in the House and the Senate than bring price relief to average Americans and shore up a shaky manufacturing sector buffeted by skyrocketing energy costs.

Democrats of course say in unison “We can’t drill our way out of this,” but in fact we can. More oil production means lower gas prices –it is that simple.

Democrats say it will take too long, but markets react to short and medium term developments, and a firm commitment to new supplies would immediately impact those markets.

Democrats try and throw dirt in our collective eyes, using the most inane talking point of the year about unused leases –as though Americans don’t understand that not all leased land holds oil and that oil companies don’t sit on proven reserves that they lose control of over time.

The recognition has broken through and is spreading that a vote for any democrat is a vote for soaring gas prices and a shrinking economy. Add in Obama’s feverish tax hike plans, and the recipe for an economic disaster is on the table to go along with Obama’s incredibly risky plans to retreat from Iraq and sit down with Ahmadinejad and Chavez for “no-preconditions” talks.

Tags: Hugh Hewitt, Liberal Hysteria, Oil by Publius
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I received the following in an email from a friend who did not write it. I think it’s brilliant, but can’t give the author credit. If any of you know who the author is, please let me know so I can provide proper attribution.

FIRST, do you know what ANWR is?

ANWR = Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

Now A comparison

< >

And some perspectives

< >

NOTE WHERE THE PROPOSED

DEVELOPMENT AREA IS

(it’s in the ‘ANWR Coastal Plain’)

< >

THIS IS WHAT THE DEMOCRATS, LIBERALS

AND ‘GREENS’ SHOW YOU WHEN THEY TALK

ABOUT ANWR

and they are right this IS a photograph of ANWR

< >

and so is this

< >

and so is this

< >

ISN’T ANWR BEAUTIFUL? WHY SHOULD

WE DRILL HERE (AND DESTROY)

THIS BEAUTIFUL PLACE?

WELL THAT’S NOT EXACTLY THE TRUTH

Do you remember the map?

The map showed that the proposed drilling area

is in the ANWR Coastal Plain

Do those photographs look like a coastal plain to you?

WHAT’S GOING ON HERE?

THE ANSWER IS SIMPLE

THAT IS NOT WHERE THEY ARE

WANTING TO DRILL!

THIS IS WHAT THE PROPOSED EXPLORATION

AREA ACTUALLY LOOKS LIKE IN THE WINTER

< >

AND THIS IS WHAT IT ACTUALLY LOOKS

LIKE IN THE SUMMER

< >

and this

< >

HERE ARE A COUPLE SCREEN SHOTS

FROM GOOGLE EARTH

< >

. . .

< >

AS YOU CAN SEE, THE AREA WHERE THEY

ARE TALKING ABOUT DRILLING IS A

BARREN WASTELAND.

OH AND THEY SAY THAT THEY ARE CONCERNED ABOUT THE EFFECT ON THE LOCAL WILDLIFE.

HERE IS A PHOTO (SHOT DURING THE SUMMER)

OF THE ‘DEPLETED WILDLIFE’ SITUATION

CREATED BY DRILLING AROUND PRUDHOE BAY .

DON’T YOU THINK THAT THE

CARIBOU REALLY HATE THAT DRILLING?

< >

HERE’S THAT SAME SPOT DURING

THE WINTER.

< >

HEY, THIS BEAR SEEMS TO REALLY

HATE THE PIPELINE NEAR PRUDHOE BAY *

< >

*The Prudhoe bay area accounts for 17% of U.S. domestic oil production

NOW, WHY DO YOU THINK THAT THE

DEMOCRATS ARE LYING ABOUT ANWR?

REMEMBER WHEN AL GORE SAID THAT
THE GOVERNMENT SHOULD WORK TO

ARTIFICIALLY RAISE GAS PRICES
TO $5.00 A GALLON?

WELL

AL GORE AND HIS FELLOW DEMOCRATS

HAVE ALMOST REACHED THEIR GOAL!

NOW THAT YOU KNOW THAT THE

DEMOCRATS HAVE BEEN LYING,
WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO ABOUT IT?

YOU CAN START BY FORWARDING THIS

TO EVERYONE YOU KNOWŠ
SO THAT THEY WILL KNOW THE TRUTH.

Tags: Environment, Liberal Hysteria, Oil by Publius
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Excellent opinion piece in Investors Business Daily this morning:

Watching Democrat leaders in Washington respond to skyrocketing gas prices has been nothing short of a tutorial on the five stages of grief.

Weeks of conspicuous silence (denial). Lashing out at the oil companies, the White House, the markets, the oil companies again (anger). Repeated pronouncements that prices would stabilize at one point or another in the not-too-distant future (bargaining). The long faces trying to explain away their failure to pass a single energy bill that creates energy (depression).

Sen. Barack Obama topped it all off by saying he had hoped the rise in gas prices would have been a “gradual adjustment” so American families could adapt to the reality of four-buck gasoline. Acceptance.

For Obama, there is some cathartic value in paying four bucks for a gallon of gasoline. Tell that to the independent trucker paying $1,500 to fill up, or the school districts eliminating bus stops — or entire routes, for that matter. Tell that to the family that didn’t have the resources to carry out its travel plans over July Fourth.

On this issue, Washington isn’t just broken — it’s AWOL. Roadblocks to reform efforts have been reinforced by shopworn rhetoric and retread initiatives. Real initiatives have been supplanted by a mealy-mouth hodgepodge of supposed cure-alls, one more ineffectual than the next

The Dems were supposed to have such a good year then this nasty oil price thing comes rolling in. The party is in thrall to the eco-left and can’t win without them, but all these pesky voters aren’t willing to sit still and pay $4.00 for a gallon of gas.

Harry Reid is just sick about oil, coal, the whole thing.

Tags: Environment, Liberal Hysteria, Oil by Publius
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Lame-duck Senator John Warner (R?!?-VA) has asked the Energy Department to investigate the potential costs and benefits of a federally-mandated 55 mph speed limit everywhere.

One of the problems with having a geriatric legislature of life-tenured incumbents is that its members spend a lot of time thinking about the good old days. From 1974-1995, an identical law was in force. This was a bad idea of Richard Nixon (who also imposed wage/price controls in a futile effort to limit inflation) designed to get the U.S. through an oil crisis.

This law was universally broken, beginning with mild violations along the Eastern seaboard and increasing as one traveled westward with the highest speeds generally present in Western states like Nevada (which “enforced” the national speed limit with a $5.00 waste-of-resources fine for a period of time).

The practical question for drivers was not whether they would drive 55 or not (everyone drove faster), but rather how much faster could they drive without receiving a ticket. 5 mph over was a safe bet everywhere. West of the Mississippi, 10 mph over almost never caused problems and 15 mph over was frequently observed.
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Tags: Economy, Energy, Environment, Liberal Hypocrisy, Liberal Quirks, Liberalism, Oil, Welfare by Publius
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From the Houston Chronicle:

I haven’t got anything against the residents of Florida and California. They seem like friendly folks.

But as a resident of the Central Gulf Coast, I have to ask: Where do they get off, insisting that their beaches should be protected from the evils of oil and gas drilling and production?

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Tags: Energy, Environment, Liberal Hypocrisy, Oil by Publius
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