DRILL, DRILL, DRILL

It is time to take up the anthem raised by Sarah Palin in 2007 - DRILL, BABY, DRILL.
Following the BP oil spill, the Obama administration halted virtually all oil drilling off the Louisiana coast. It remains that way today despite two federal court orders lifting the drilling ban. The actions of the Obama Justice Department and the Environmental Protection Agency should be cause for a contempt of court action. The Louisiana economy remains devastated. And the American economy is now further endangered by the reckless disregard of the administration, Democrats in congress and the silence, at least so far, of congressional Republicans.
Unrest is flaming into revolution in key oil producing countries in the middle east. Wall Street oil speculators are running up the future price of gasoline with abandon. And some economists are now predicting Americans face $5.00 a gallon prices at the pump before the end of the year.
This would be a catastrophic blow to an economy undergoing, at best, a slow and anemic recovery. Statistically, more than nine percent of our fellow Americans remain unemployed. That figure swells by fifty percent if those who have given up looking for work are counted. And many of those who have found new jobs are taking home smaller paychecks.
It is these Americans who will feel the brunt of political instability abroad and our failure to drill for domestic oil every time they fill up their tank.
The American Petroleum Institute reports there is enough oil under American soil and off our coastlines to supply U. S. domestic needs for at least a century.
A majority of states are challenging the unpopular and hugely expensive Obama healthcare plan, among them Indiana. Now these states need to petition the federal courts to lift federal bans on oil drilling and allow individual states to make those decisions, including allowing drilling on federal lands that are not part of federal park systems.
Leasing drilling rights could be a quick source of sorely needed revenue for cash strapped states. And could also be a source of income for the residents of states where drilling is allowed.
All Alaskans who meet the residency requirement receive a sizable check every year as their direct share of revenues from oil drilling. Those checks would balloon if the billions of gallons of oil beneath the desolate and uninhabitable area called Anwar could be tapped.
States should also be granted the right to approve construction of new oil refineries. The federal government (EPA) has blocked such construction for more than a quarter-century. Think of the higher paying jobs oil drilling and refinery construction and operation would provide to thousands of American workers.
America imports nearly three quarters of the oil we use. Since the price of oil is traded in U. S. currency, the effect of such a high import ratio is to keep the dollar weak against other world currencies. That makes the cost of anything the U. S. imports higher for American consumers.
An even more troubling situation is Mexico, from which America imports 15.5% of the oil we need. That country is in chaos, with no indication the criminal instability and corruption crippling our neighbor to the south will be ameliorated anytime soon.
Worse - 12% of our oil comes from Venezuela. It goes downhill from there if you count middle eastern countries and places like Nigeria. These countries are not our friends and it should become a priority of this country and our Congress to end the oil import bonds that bind us to them.
With political instability wracking the middle east, this is a good time to lure American oil companies home, along with the drilling rigs that are invested overseas, particularly the off-shore drilling platforms. Nearly 40 such platforms were pulled from our southern waters and towed to other places around the world following the imposition of the Obama drilling ban on the Gulf coast.
The madness that has permeated our government's oil drilling policies must end - and end now. The crisis so long predicted is here. And it has the makings of a far worse crisis than we faced in the 1970's. I'm old enough to remember the waiting in long lines to fill-up, that is if there was gasoline available.
What can Congress do immediately? Start by temporarily banning oil futures trading. Only traders, financial firms and hedge funds benefit from such trading, and of course the oil companies and their big-bonused executives, who simply smile indulgently at the machinations of Wall Street all the way to the bank, while American consumers and the American economy suffer.
American oil resources belong to the American people and should only be drilled by American companies hiring American workers for the sole use of their fellow Americans.
Americans should benefit from the leasing and allocating of those resources - not suffer at the hands of a recalcitrant government in the pockets of environmental lobbyists.
Let us take up the chant - DRILL, BABY, DRILL - NOW!

TARGET: PALIN

After days of being blamed, vilified, and spoken of by pundits on MSNBC and in the leftist bloggersphere in the most unspeakable terms for the shootings in Tucson, Sarah Palin has finally spoken.
In a video posted on her Facebook page, Palin said, "Like many, I've spent the past few days reflecting on what happened and praying for guidance...After this shocking tragedy, I listened at first puzzled, then with concern, and now with sadness, to the irresponsible statements from people attempting to apportion blame for this terrible event."
She was referring to those very pundits and self-labeled journalists who spout the hateful, misleading and downright untruthful vitriol on outlets like MSNBC and also in the mainstream press.
In today's Los Angeles Times, reporter James Oliphant begins his story by saying, "In a forceful and unapologetic statement released early Wednesday..."
First - what a great example of unbiased journalism! Not!
Second - for what does Palin need to apologize?
Palin has it right when she referred to Jared Lee Loughner "as a deranged...apparently apolitical criminal." Which is what the FBI is finding. And what at least one friend of the mass murderer has verified. That friend said he never knew Loughner to listen to what he termed "political radio or television." Loughner was a registered, albeit nonvoting, voter.
Reason and truth seem not to stem the vitriol spilling forth from MSNBC and other outlets on the left. During the five minutes I tuned into something called The Ed Show on MSNBC Tuesday evening, I heard a steady stream of derogatory and deplorable adjectives describing Palin, but the best was some radio talk show host I've never heard, nor heard of, insinuating the term "mama grizzlies", coined by Palin, was somehow a hate inciting moniker.
Excuse me!
Palin nor anyone else is to blame for the horrific crime in Tucson except the immediate family of Loughner and the shooter himself. His parents had a duty to get him psychiatric help and commit him for institutional care if needed. Arizona has one of the best rated state hospitals for the care of the mentally ill in the nation.
Despite numerous warning signs, what we have been told so far is the parents did not take these steps. The father is being labeled an "abusive alcoholic" by some who know him and have spoken with the media on the promise of anonymity. If this is true, then there is a double tragedy at work in this clearly dysfunctional family.
Which leads me to ask, why was the mother not seeking help for both her husband and her son?

WHERE POLITICS HAS NO PLACE

Like fellow Americans, I share the shock and sadness at the unspeakable killings and woundings in Tucson Saturday. Those emotions remain.
But on Saturday night, the Democrat Sheriff of Pima County, Arizona, Clarence Dupnik, began his update on the senseless crime by ascribing blame to what he termed "the rhetoric of hatred." He was clearly blaming conservative talk radio and television pundits. I knew at that moment his words would ignite a rancorous political discourse that is misplaced at this time, and clearly wrong.
Only moments after making his unfortunate statement laying blame, the sheriff admitted investigators had not determined the motive for the mass shootings.
We know from a much more reasoned FBI Director Mueller the perpetrator was a mentally troubled man, a high school dropout, rejected for enlistment into the armed services, kicked out of a Tucson community college for threatening and erratic behavior, who had a history of drug use, of posting irrational rants on his social websites and who listed his favorite books as Mein Kampf and the Communist Manifesto. A socialist philosophy is espoused in both books, the antithesis of writings and advocatings of the likes of Rush Limbaugh, Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck, Bill O'Reilly and Shawn Hannity, at whose feet Sheriff Dupnik placed blame.
Elected officials like Dupnik do a great disservice to this nation by injecting politics into the tragedy that befell Congresswoman Gabby Giffords and the other victims who were killed or badly wounded.
It is Dupnik's words that have no place in our political discourse. The sheriff's abuse of the forum granted him Saturday night by virtue of being the top law enforcement officer in Pima County reminded me of the memorial service for the late Minnesota congressman Paul Wellstone, a democrat who died in a plane crash while campaigning.
The politically partisan rhetoric whipped up by Iowa Senator Tom Harkin and Wellstone's son was so vitriolic that several Republican members of Congress had to be removed from the service by security personnel who feared for their safety.
The one Democrat who has stood above the partisan crowd is President Obama. His empathetic words on Saturday afternoon set the right tone for all Americans. I may disagree with many of President Obama's policies, but never have I seen him look and act more presidential.
His is the example those in his party, and his supporters, should follow.

DEATH PANELS RESURRECTED

In a blatant countermanding of congressional intent, death panels have been resurrected by the Obama administration.
A firestorm erupted after the American public learned panels of doctors would be organized under the new healthcare act to determine if medical care should continue for elderly or critically ill patients.
Democrats quickly dropped the doctor panel provisions of the mammoth bill, while at the same time castigating Sarah Palin for aptly naming the panels what they are - death panels. The Los Angeles Times went so far as to call Palin's labeling of the physician panels as death panels the "biggest lie" of 2010.
Oh, do we wish it were so!
Now bureaucrats at Health and Human Services have resuscitated death panels through regulations - regulations which Oregon Democrat Earl Blumenauer counseled the department to keep under wraps. Unfortunately for the congressman, the New York Times failed to comply with the secretive directive.
By-the-way, Blumenauer is a true blue "professional politician." If you look up his bio on his own web page you will find he has been drinking from the public trough since college. But then, he is from Portland, Oregon, that port in any storm for liberals.
The new congress needs to act quickly and decisively by passing new legislation giving congress oversight of all regulations issued by administrative departments of government working under the executive branch (the president). If the executive branch balks at such oversight, it can file suit and under our constitution the judicial branch (supreme court) becomes the final arbiter of who has oversight power - bureaucrats or lawmakers.
It was the intent of our founding fathers that there should be a means of checks and balances over all government, particularly the legislative and executive branches.
The executive branch, through its czars and appointees, has once again over reached to the detriment of the American public which made its voice heard loud and clear at town hall meetings and at the polls Nov. 2 - voices that appear to have fallen on deaf ears at the White House.

GET A LIFE STEVE SCHMIDT

Steve Schmidt has a boogie woman in his flawed political closet - Sarah Palin. And the former top strategist for the McCain campaign seems unable to exorcise her to cover his own failings. He's making another stab at it in a new book, Game Change, authored by liberal journalists Mark Halperin (Time Magazine) and John Heilemann (New York Magazine).

Schmidt reiterated his criticisms on 60 Minutes Sunday night, accusing Palin of being "unfocused" and ignorant of historic details. And once again Schmidt portrayed the former Alaskan Governor and McCain running mate as stupid, uneducated, totally ignorant of national and international issues and an overall screw-up.

Then to top it off Schmidt accused Palin of lying frequently and charged she misled the campaign when she declared a report of a state ethics probe had exonerated her of wrongdoing. Actually it did, except for questioning one instance of Palin using state funds to cover the cost of having her young children accompany her on an trip involving state business. Palin promptly repaid the amount and apologized even before she was tapped as a vice-presidential candidate.

Schmidt's largely unfounded accusation borders on slander. If Schmidt has facts to support his allegations of Palin's lack of veracity he should make such facts public. Not to do so raises questions about his own dishonesty.

Schmidt's continuing effort to lay blame for a failed campaign at the feet of Sarah Palin is yet another attempt to deflect criticism of himself and campaign manager Rick Davis. Would you hire these two for your next campaign? Not if you want to win.

As always, Schmidt and the authors of the new book are being aided and abetted by a compliant national media which seems ever eager to criticize Palin. Example - Anderson Cooper asking Schmidt if he knew early on that "she (Palin) didn't know anything."

"It was clear we had a lot of work to do," was Schmidt's pompous reply.

Schmidt's demeaning of Palin is a rehash of what he has been spouting for months. It's time he put a lid on that spout.

The two authors of Game Change also take Hilary Clinton to the woodshed, contending she was so confident of winning the Democrat nomination that she began planning her transition to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue a year ahead of the election. There is no derogatory assessment of the Obama campaign which was found to be doing the same thing prematurely.

I wonder if people will stand in the cold for hours waiting to get books signed by these two unremarkable writers masquerading as journalists.

I seriously doubt it. And I seriously doubt their book will sell anywhere close to the two million copies already sold of Palin's book.

I've had enough of northeastern smug, chauvinistic, supercilious male journalists. I don't recall any male journalist spending weeks in jail on contempt of court charges for refusing to reveal sources as did Judith Miller when she still worked for the New York Times. She did so to protect the First Amendment rights of all journalists. Fortunately, Miller saw the light and is now a news analyst on the Fox News Channel.

Who says there is no Santa Claus?

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