Democrats demand $10 a gallon gas

Here's a news flash that hasn't been covered by our beloved mainstream media: Democrats won't allow drilling in the United States... even if gas hits $10 a gallon.

Mitch McConnell (R-KY): "What is the definition of an emergency? Maybe it is $7.50 a gallon? Therefore I renew my consent request with the following modification... that the implementation date that triggers the modification would occur when the price of gasoline reaches seven dollars and fifty cents a gallon."

Ken Salazar (D-CO): "I... I... object".

MM: "Mr. President, I renew my request with the modification that the trigger be ten dollars a gallon at the pump."

KS: "I object."

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We have enough oil to satisfy American needs for at least the next 100 years, but Democrats won’t let you have it. They’d rather you pay $10 per gallon at the pump and watch food prices increase 250% rather than agree to drilling. If you don’t want $10 per gallon gas, vote Republican.

Not to worry. Barack Obama has a plan.

There are things you can do individually, though, to save energy... Making sure your tires are properly inflated - simple thing...

But we could save all the oil that they're talking about getting off drilling - if everybody was just inflating their tires? And getting regular tune-ups? You'd actually save just as much!

PMSNBC markets Barack Obama's additional claim that the billions in profits made by the oil companies (and paid out to around 100 million folks who own shares) are to blame.

Hours after Exxon-Mobil announced a record $12 billion quarterly profit, Obama whacked the oil industry. “While big oil is making record profits,” he said, “you’re paying record prices at the pump, and our economy is leaving working people behind.”

Obama defended his opposition to expanded offshore oil drilling, saying it wouldn’t provide “short-term relief or medium-term relief or, in fact, long-term relief.”

Obama, however, fails to note the government's involvement in "the tyranny of oil." About half of the oil companies' profits feed directly into the government's tax coffers:

ExxonMobil just announced their 2008 2Q earnings -- $11.7 billion -- which are being touted by the press as the "highest-ever" profit for a US company -- of course there is either a de-emphasis or no mention at all of the company's profit margin in most of these stories (ed. -- Exxon's 2008 2Q profit margin was just less than 8.5%) -- a number which might add some additional context to the report.

However, what might be most interesting about Exxon's 2008 2Q earnings report was its effective tax rate of 49% (pdf file), up from a rate of 44% in the 2Q of 2007.

And while Obama whines about Exxon-Mobil's $12 billion profit, during the same period, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Kuwait, the UAE, Libya and Venezuela collected roughly $250 billion in sales of crude oil!


By opposing drilling, Democrats are demanding we send our money to the Middle East and not American companies like Exxon-Mobil.

By opposing drilling, Democrats are demanding $10-a-gallon gas.

By opposing drilling, Democrats are weakening America.

Vote accordingly in 2008.

Update: Krauthammer makes a compelling argument that the no-drill policy of the Democrats harms the planet.

The United States has the highest technology to ensure the safest drilling. Today, directional drilling — essentially drilling down, then sideways — allows access to oil that in 1970 would have required a surface footprint more than three times as large...

Does Pelosi imagine that with so much of America declared off-limits, the planet is less injured as drilling shifts to Kazakhstan and Venezuela and Equatorial Guinea? That Russia will be more environmentally scrupulous than we in drilling in its Arctic? [Pelosi's policy] simply exports it to more corrupt, less efficient, more unstable parts of the world — thereby increasing net planetary damage.

Read it all.