We are now officially in the general election campaign. Hillary seems to have given her endorsement of Barack Obama. (albeit a left handed one.) And Barack Obama is going hammer and tong after John McCain, on of all things: Iraq. Someone should ask the good senator from Illinois how long he can keep the failure narrative going when the good news about how things are going has finally leaked out. The casualty rates for soldiers are dropping. Iraqis are actually working together to stabilize their own country. John McCain handled himself fairly well in the televised town hall from New York. The one sour note was that he did not encourage more drilling to get oil prices down, but I think he’ll get there.
The Supreme Court in a 5/4 decision just totally usurped the powers of both the executive and legislative branch of our government in a way that almost constitutes a mini coup d’ etat. Never in history have foreign enemies ever had rights conferrred on them equal to that of an American citizen. You won’t find it in the constitution. It’s just not there. And today’s ruling overturns the high court’s own previous decision to say that the President and the Congress need to write new law to address the complex issue of incarcerating foreign terroists for long periods of time. It was done. Justice Kennedy and his leftist entourage basically said “We don’t like it, so WE’RE going to make our own law from the bench and override any veto.” I’d have to read my history again but wasn’t it Andrew Jackson who once said in a similar situation: “The Supreme Court has issued its ruling, now let them try to enforce it!” Yes one time in our history when the court overreached they got some pushback. President Bush, are you listening? If anything could cause me to lose what reservations I have about finally endorsing Senator McCain for President this is it. A liberal democrat in the White House even for 4 years to be able to appoint more judges in the mold of Kennedy, Souter, Stevens, Breyer, and Ginsburg are a luxury as a nation we cannot afford. Say what you will about Bush’s occasional drifts to the left, he’s appointed some excellent judges.
Oil is a commodity everyone needs. Demand has stripped supply. When Conservatives say this is the force of supply and demand. They got the demand part right, but the constrictions on supply are artificial and politically driven. The Saudis will not pump more oil, not when they’re making $138 a barrel at a net cost of $2. The radical environmentalists aren’t going to relax their stranglehold on supply because they think we DESERVE to pay higher prices. The democrats don’t care enough about the constituencies they purport to care about, namely the working poor, enough to do anything to bring the cost of gas down. Their answer is a windfall profits tax. Anybody that thinks that will lower the cost of filling your gas tank, I’ve got some land to sell you in southwest Dade County. Although you won’t want to build any housing there even if you could. Newt’s said it. Sean’s said it. I don’t know for sure but I think Rush has said it. We need to get out own oil offshore, in Anwar, from the shale oil in the Rockies. Canada also has shale oil reserves that they’re developing. Bill O’Reilly pointed out that tariffs have been slapped on Brazilian sugar based ethanol which is better than the corn based ethanol produced in the United States. So we can’t import it. Car companies need to produce more flex fuel vehicles for use domestically.
The Markets run largely on emotion. Anytime you hear someone from the opposition say that drilling in Anwar will take 10 years and not produce enough oil, that’s not true. Even if it did take 10 years (which it might) and even if there wasn’t enough oil (which there is) to make a difference, the emotional factor would bring the price down. Don’t believe me? Think about it when you think about the speculators. In the movie: “Trading Places,” what were Don Ameche, and Ralph Bellamy’s characters? They were commodites brokers. They bet on the price of orange juice, coffee, and other commodities. They bought more when they heard there was a drought or any other scenario that created an expectation that prices would rise. Same with oil. The expectation of high demand creates even higher demand. If a newspaper headline is out that says: “President McCain approves offshore drilling from Texas, California, Florida, and off the continental shelf. No actual oil has yet been recovered, but the expectation would effect domestic and world markets. And the price would come down. The emotional reaction would be something like “Oh S___! The Americans are p___ed now. We can’t push them around anymore.” That’s the message I would like to send.