The administration, with a little help from the media, is attempting to redefine progress. Let’s look at where we are: 8.2% unemployment is the new 5.2%.  The new norm.  That 8.2% is nothing to be alarmed about.  No problem.  And $5/gallon gasoline, that’s the new $3.  Not $4.  Remember when $4 was hit, everybody went crazy?  No, now $5 gasoline, “Hey, it’s the new the norm! It’s not as much as they’re paying in Europe.  You should feel lucky.”

Then there’s the oil head-fake, lie. The oil ‘subsidies’ which are not really subsidies but current tax law, are the same production and manufacturing incentives that all companies enjoy, whether they make cars or gasoline.

Yet, the Divider-in-Cheif continues to demagogue the entire industry, urging Congress to “stand with the American people” by voting to end subsidies to oil companies. Funny thing happened last week. The Democrat-controlled Senate stood with Big Oil and voted 51-47 against the bill. And how does the media report it? CBS’s  Bill Plante frames it like this . . . “GOP blocks Obama’s bid to end oil subsidies.”

From The White House, on the same day the Senate killed his bullying initiative to raise taxes on the oil industry, President Obama said . . .

“Right now, the biggest oil companies are raking in record profits. On top of these record profits, oil companies are also getting billions a year in taxpayer subsidies.”

Here’s a fact. The biggest oil companies will likely always earn record profits in terms of dollars. Not in terms of profit margin. When what you produce runs the economies of the world, and there is an endless demand for it coming from China, India, and other developing countries, the dollar amounts will consistently hit ‘record highs’ on a monthly, if not annual basis. If they don’t, then it will be because of no economic growth. Sure makes it easy for a politician to demagogue, doesn’t it?

Acting as though he was leading the charge to end crony capitalism when he was candidate Obama, President Obama climbs in bed with George Soros and Brazil. It’s just a bit dishonest for Obama to fund oil drilling and exploration in Brazil, then pledging to be their major customer, for oil that he refuses to get here.

Links: Higher gas prices cause less public anger this time  |  Obama says US to be major purchaser of Brazilian oil  |  The New Normal: Trickle-Down Poverty

Watch the transformation in this video.

Steven Chu is Energy Secretary because he and Obama are soul brothers in the concept of sacrificing the economy with high gas prices so as to (in their liberal minds) force development of alternative energy sources. Chu is the same Energy Secretary that wants you to paint the roof of your house a reflective white, ostensibly to change climate change. Not sure if there is any racial implication in that. Anything is possible with this administration.

Raising ‘taxes’ on the poor is part of the plan. See The Poor Tax, and how Obama screws the poor while saying he has their back. Backside is more accurate. Of course, the media doesn’t see it that way.

1. Gas prices going up.
2. President Obama nixes the Keystone XL Pipeline from Canada to Texas.
3. Gas prices still going up.
4. Public polling suggest that two-thirds of Americans believe gas is too high and are in favor of the XL Pipeline.
5. President Obama goes to Oklahoma to glam onto what would be the end part of the XL Pipeline to speed up a construction project that has already been approved, and, that did not need Presidential approval in the first place.
6. The President is a poser, trying to give Americans the illusion that he has changed his tune on the XL Pipeline.

Pelosi said she would continue to oppose two policy changes that President Bush and congressional Republicans have been advocating: lifting the ban on offshore drilling and opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for oil exploration. Watch Pelosi argue against more drilling »

Pelosi said she had no plans to allow votes to lift a ban on offshore drilling despite widespread support for the move.

You know we haven’t seen the peak of high gas prices yet, and they’re already at or above the 2008 levels. If you want a laugh at how ignorant this woman is on this subject, look at the video.

Every time you fill up your gas tank(s) at a record high price, remember all that Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi are doing to bring prices down. Nothing.

Link: ‘Two oil men’ to blame for high gas prices, Pelosi says

The message to the president was clear. There is majority bi-partisan support for the pipeline. The senate voted for it 56-42. But because the Senate rules required 60 votes for passage, it was defeated.

In all, 11 Democrats joined 45 Republicans to support the pipeline. Only the fact that 60 votes were needed for passage saved the White House from an embarrassing defeat.

How does a president justify turning down a project that would build a measure of energy independence and energy infrastructure and lower gas prices?

How does a president justify turning down a project that would create 20,000 jobs now, and over 140,000 jobs once complete? Union jobs in fact. (Big Labor supports the pipeline.)

Today it’s out. President Obama doesn’t want jobs if they have anything to do with the oil industry. He doesn’t want energy infrastructure improvements nor any oil from Canada to come to our refineries and our ports. He made that known today.

President Obama finally gave us his blueprint for the nation’s energy future, beginning today apparently. He told us that oil is the energy of the past.

Oh really? Here’s what the United States Energy Information Administration has to say about it.

EIA projects that most petroleum-based and non-petroleum based liquid fuels — including those derived from fuels such as coal, biomass, and natural gas — will continue to be used for transportation over the next two decades.

Who at the EIA is going to update President Obama on this?

Under normal circumstances, the president could effectively lower the price of a barrel of crude oil in a matter of minutes. All he has to do is announce and commit this country into becoming an oil producer instead of an oil buyer.

Using his bully pulpit, he can announce an energy policy that actually gets energy.

• Free-up natural gas and oil drilling and exploration
• Call for the rapid approval of the XL Pipeline
• Building of new refineries.
• Stop fining the coal industry out of existence with Cap and Trade.
• Reverse himself on the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste depot.

All the needed parts to get to energy independence can be announced, and the markets would react.

There is a problem. These are not normal circumstances. We have heard his commitment to reach energy independence before. We have seen his actions doing the opposite. His liberal man-made-global-warming ‘theology’ is calling the shots.

President Obama could hold his press conference on energy independence, a new ‘war,’ if you will, on high energy prices. But his biggest obstacle to him using the bully pulpit on this subject is that no world leader or oil speculator would believe him.

Link: Obama’s Oily Rope-a-Dope, Part 2  |  Who Do You Trust?

via Exxon Mobil: $908 M awarded in Venezuela dispute – Yahoo! Finance.

Under President Jimmy Carter, The ‘Department of Energy’ was instituted on August 4, 1977. Its purpose was to lessen U.S. dependence on foreign oil.

Imports: In 1977, 8,565,000 barrels of oil (net) per day, or 37.3%.  For 2009, 9,667,000 barrels per day, or 51%

Domestic production has declined. The U.S. produced 3 billion barrels of oil in 1977. By 2009, that was reduced to 1.95 billion, according to the EIA.

Oil consumption in the U.S. is up, not down. In 1977, the U.S.consumed 18.4 million barrels of oil per day. In 2009, we consumed 18.77 million barrels per day, making the U.S. the world’s largest petroleum consumer.

Gasoline usage has grown significantly. In 1977, the U.S. utilized 7.1 million barrels/day of gasoline. In 2009, Americans used 8,997,000 barrels/day, or 378 million gallons/day.

Gasoline prices have continued to rise. In 1979, the average price of gasoline in the U.S. was $0.58 per gallon, according to the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics. Adjusted for inflation, that is the equivalent of $1.85 in 2010 dollars. In 2009, the average price of gasoline in the United States was $2.88 per gallon. During 2008, oil prices reached a record high of $145 a barrel, with gasoline prices of more than $4 per gallon throughout much of the nation.

A huge federal bureaucracy was created. The Department of Energy brought together under one Cabinet secretary more than 50 agencies that dealt with energy, including the Atomic Energy Commission. Upon its creation in 1977, according to official estimates, the new DOE employed a total of 20,000 people. Today, the Department of Energy has 16,000 permanent employees and 100,000 contract employees around the nation.

The agency’s budget, meanwhile, has ballooned from $8.4 billion in Fiscal Year 1980 to $26.5 billion in FY2010.

Good intentions do not necessarily translate to good results, especially where the federal government is concerned. Matter of fact, the Dept. of Energy and the Dept. of Education (both DOE’s) should be the first to go in cutting government waste.

H/T Political Vel Craft

All the studies of the pipeline are done. Our Canadian neighbors are not happy that Obama chose to delay his decision on the pipeline until after the 2012 election. Senate bill S.1932 is Republican’s attempt to force the president’s hand before the election, calling for a decision from the Sec. of State within 60 days.

The bill would:

1. Establish congressional affirmation that Keystone XL is good for job creation, economic growth, and national security;
2. Require the President, through the Secretary of State, to issue a permit within 60 days to allow the Keystone XL project to move ahead, unless he finds that it’s not in the national interest;
3. Require the permit for Keystone XL to contain strong and specific environmental protections and protect states’ rights;
4. Require the federal permit to recognize an alternative route approved by Nebraska, protecting their ability to shift the route of the pipeline to avoid the Sand Hills area, while not holding up construction elsewhere;
5. Concludes more than three years of federal review by deeming the Final Environmental Impact Statement to be adequate.

Where President Obama is concerned, his re-election takes precedent over the national interest. Because if he were to approve the pipeline, he would alienate his environmental base and risk losing their campaign contributions. If he rejects it before the election, he puts BIG LABOR (labor unions are in favor of the pipeline) on the ropes and risks losing their support.  To him, putting off the decision until after the election is his way of voting present and doesn’t risk a dime of campaign contributions or support from either the environmental or labor union special interests.

If he rejects it, how could he explain to the American people why the nation doesn’t need 700,000 barrels a day of Canadian crude and 140,000 high-paying jobs? After all the green-energy bankruptcy scandals (BrightSource, Solyndra, etc.), he can’t say with a straight face how green energy is the answer to today’s energy problems. His own Energy Information Administration . . .

projects that most petroleum-based and non-petroleum based liquid fuels — including those derived from fuels such as coal, biomass, and natural gas — will continue to be used for transportation over the next two decades.

At a time when our economy is struggling and real unemployment is north of 11 percent, a truly shovel ready project like this means over a hundred thousand jobs nationwide. 14,000 in Oklahoma alone according to Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK), ranking Republican on the Senate Environment Committee.

In my state of Oklahoma alone, we’d be creating 14,000 jobs with the Keystone pipeline. Existing pipeline infrastructure can’t accommodate the current volume of crude oil, which makes us more dependent on imports and vulnerable to increasing prices. The Keystone pipeline will improve both the inbound and outbound flow of crude oil at Cushing, OK.

Speaking to the President’s speeches of lessening U.S. dependence on Middle East oil and creating jobs, Inhofe continues . . .

There’s not one piece of legislation in the House or Senate right now that would do more to achieve both of these goals than this Keystone bill that we are introducing today.

If you think we don’t have an energy problem, consider this. Bill Clinton opposed ANWR exploration because, he said, it would take 10 years to get anything out of it. That was nearly 20 years ago and ANWR is still closed. As recent as five years ago, people in the Northeast United States were suffering from a lack of heating oil. (84 percent of heating in the NE comes from oil.) Back then, Joe Kennedy’s oil company accepted discounted heating oil from the hemisphere’s idiot, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, to ostensibly ‘help’ poor people in the United States. A political move to give then President Bush a slap in the face.

All the green energy talk and environmental lobbies have managed to do to solve the NE problem is . . . nothing. Five years later and we have headlines like this one, ‘Northeast states cut heating aid to poor.’

If there ever was a case to increase oil production, I think people going without heat or food would make a compelling case. Even though these are the people Obama champions on the campaign trail, he officially ignores them in The White House.

National security meets foreign policy

While we’re on the subject of oil independence, let’s take a look back to the Carter administration and the long lines at the pump, the gas rationing, and OPEC’s embargo that caused it all.

Jimmy Carter was forced into getting a spine and came up with the Carter Doctrine. It was supposed to ensure protection of Middle East oil. Carter declared that the United States would consider any attempt by an outside force to gain control of the gulf region an assault on U.S. vital interests, and would be considered an act of war that would be repelled by military force if necessary. Carter also invented the Cabinet position of the Department of Energy which, thanks to environmentalists and big government statists, was and is a dismal failure.

Today, the Iranian situation is still volatile. They are making threats via military exercises to close the Strait of Hormuz to oil traffic. With the Keystone Pipeline project on the table, and people in the Northeast  being left in the cold, and Iran threatening to cut off oil to most of the world, how does him voting present on the Keystone Pipeline work for you?

So far, except for ‘social justice,’ there is no Obama Doctrine.

News of the transaction is also noteworthy. You have the headline-grabbing union-busting Huffington Post putting a happy face on the deal. But when you follow the link to the story, youll see evidence that this is yet another waste of taxpayer money in the name of green jobs. Apparently, the thieves at the Huffington post dont even read the stories they steal, let alone give credit to Jaclyn Trop, the writer of the story.

In reading the story, the economic growth stimulus money will be used in the Southeast Michigan Advanced Energy Storage Systems Initiative. Batteries. Great idea when you consider that Michigan is home to more than 35 advanced battery companies and suppliers for battery systems and electric vehicles, more than any other state, according to the Michigan Economic Development Corp.

Sounds like a good investment of taxpayer money. Except for the fact that, once again, markets exist when there is demand for a product. Lacking demand, there is no market, no business. According to the article, this is a product that nobody wants. What is the point of boosting manufacturing of a product that is already over supplied and without market demand sufficient to stay in business and effictively compete with China?

Michigan has given solar and lithium-ion battery manufacturers tens of millions of dollar in state tax incentives in recent years, but both industries are building more products than there is demand for, according to industry reports.

OK, that was the ‘good’ news. The bad news is . . .

The worldwide manufacturing capacity of lithium-ion batteries for electric vehicles will greatly exceed supply unless demand by automakers increases significantly in the short run, according to a September report by Bloomberg New Energy Finance.

and

Energy Conversion Devices Inc., the Auburn Hills maker of solar panels and lithium-ion batteries, has been trying to sell its battery operation. And its losses grow since demand for solar panels in Europe has dried up and Chinese companies have offered lower-priced alternatives.

Given the circumstances in the marketplace, I’m not anticipating this government spending will have a different result than Solyndra. Meanwhile, keep a sharp eye out for all the new jobs, business, and exports for Southeast Michigan.