Driving the Refinery Fight
Earlier this week, I reported that the House had passed (212-210) the Gasoline for America’s Security Act to send it to the Senate for consideration. After the vote, Democrats threw a hissy fit because the bill makes it easier to build refineries. Officially they said that they were upset because the vote was left open for 40 minutes instead of the scheduled 5 minutes. The vote was closed when a pair of congressmen switched their votes from nay to aye.
While Nancy Pelosi launched into a diatribe on the “Culture of Corruption” theme that she’s been whining about lately, the reality is that Democrats have opposed legislation that would increase our refinery capacity. When that tactic failed, their environmental extremist friends blocked them in the courts and bureaucrats made it impossible by instituting piles of regulations created to stop energy companies dead in their tracks.
This was all done in the name of “The Environment.” What Christianity is to many conservatives, “the environment” is to liberals. Only theirs is a false religion.
Many were the times we saw headlines that forecast caribou herds would be destroyed or greatly reduced because of the Alaska Pipeline. Back then, the environmental extremists said that we shouldn’t kill caribou for such a tiny amount of oil. Then as now, they told us that there was little more than a few years worth of oil in the area. Now it’s 25 years later and that pipeline is still pumping out crude oil.
What about the effect the pipeline had on caribou, you ask? Not only has it not radically altered their migration routs but many is the time that I’ve seen pictures of a calf and mother resting beneath the pipeline, looking none the worse for wear I might add.
Now we’re told that offshore drilling will forever cause environmental damage. I ask the environmental extremists what they based their predictions on. Unbiased objective studies? Or emotions and fits of rage at capitalists bent on destroying the earth? I suspect, now as then, that it’s the latter and not the former. As is so often the case with the liberal extremists, emotions, not facts, drive the debate.
Back when I cast my first ever vote, I voted for Hubert H. Humphrey, a liberal’s liberal and a great speaker. Back then, the Democratic Party was populated with caring, thoughtful people. After Hubert’s death during the Carter administration, and the death of Scoop Jackson, moderation died in the Democratic Party. When they died, and later on Pat Moynihan’s passing, what might be called the National security wing of the Democratic Party died, too, manned now only by Joe Lieberman.
Now screaming fanatics rule the Democratic Party. That’s how we heard the howls at the Nancy Pelosi diatribe party. Gone are the level-headed guys. I wish those guys had passed those qualities along to the next generation. Farewell and thanks to the Happy Warrior, to Pat and to Scoop.
Cross-posted at BoxerWatch
October 10th, 2005 at 9:41 am
[...] Oil-rich Countries Tap Into New Political Power » Swimming With The Sharks In S.F. » DNC Memo: Encourage Conservatives To ContinueOpposing Miers » Treasure Island: San Francisco’s Latest Political Scandal » CENTCOM Press Releases: Relief to Pakistan After Earthquake » Peace Isn’t the Answer » “A Radical Healthcare Solution” » “Doers & Kibitzers:” Miers and Her Critics » Psychoanalysis of Anti-War Protestors » Hurricane Harriet » Justice Scalia Defends Miers » Driving the Refinery Fight » Schwarzenegger Vetoes Another Illegal Immigrant Driver’s License Bill » Democrats as National Security Hawks » Should we push for English to be declared our official language? » Gov. Schwarzenegger Signs Bill To Ban Sale of Violent Video Games To Children » Dick Cheney A No-Show At National Review’s 50th Anniversary Gala » LA Mayor Opposes Schwarzenegger’s Initiatives » Examining Miers’ Public Legal Record » Cheapshots and Smears: Not What We’d Expect From Our Party List all posts » [...]
October 10th, 2005 at 10:05 pm
One goal of the environmental extremists is to force ordinary people(99 percent of US) to give up their SUV’s and use mass transit. They want high gas prices, which they see as forcing people to “conserve”. They see Big SUV’s and Hummers as Evil resource-consuming symbols of an evil industrial/capitalist society. The Catastrophic oil spill is used frequently in environmentalists opposition to oil drilling. Natural earth events such as Volcanic eruptions, hurricanes, rockslides, ect cause far more destruction than man-caused events. The wacko fringe environmentalists use one rare event such as the alaska oil spill or Three-mile Island to justify not building any oil platforms or Nuclear Plants. There is an element of irrationality and hysteria in the Env movement which is able to conjure up images of dead oil soaked birds and fears of radiation sickness to get emotional responses not based on facts and reason.
October 19th, 2005 at 3:16 pm
[...] Sound familiar? It should. It’s what I wrote about here. To make their point, they had to diminish the amount of energy that would be recoverable from ANWR, claiming it would amount to no more than could be saved by Americans pumping up their tires, which would save 4 million gallons of gasoline a day. That pump ‘em up savings is nothing to sneeze at, but it is a drop in what the United States Geological Survey says can be produced from ANWR’s Coastal Plain region, which amounts to between 460,000 million gallons to 1,300,000 million gallons. It would daily pump as much oil to the United States as we get from Saudi Arabia, more than 50 million gallons a day. [...]