We are the New Saudi Arabia

No, we're not going to start caning people (although I could think of a few public figures who richly deserve it).  We won't be punishing women for leaving the kitchen and driving, or charging them with sorcery.  We certainly won't follow Saudi Arabia's footsteps by killing homosexuals or funding Islamic terrorists.

We are the new Saudi Arabia, only with blessedly liberated women, loud and proud gay people, and pork BBQ.  We are sitting on top of a bountiful cornucopia of energy:

How vast are these resources? Here are some numbers:

Coal Resources

• The United States has 486 billion short tons of recoverable coal. This is enough coal to provide 464 years of electricity at today's current rate of coal consumption.
• While this is an incredible amount of coal, it is actually a very conservative estimate. This is because the estimate does not include Alaska's coal resources and Alaska holds more coal than then entire lower 48 combined.

 Oil Resources

• North America has nearly 1.8 trillion barrels of recoverable oil. That is twice as much as the combined reserves of all OPEC nations.  
• In oil shale resources alone, the United States has 1 trillion barrels of oil. This is nearly four times as large as Saudi Arabia's proven oil reserves. But due to regulations, these resources are essentially locked up.

Natural Gas Resources

• North America holds 4.2 quadrillion cubic feet of natural gas. That is enough natural gas to satisfy the United State's current natural gas demand for 575 years.
• This is more natural gas than the combined proved natural gas reserves of the next five nations (more than Russia, Iran, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Turkmenistan combined). (Debunking the Myth)  

Imagine you've been driving a little crapbox of a car that gets poor gas mileage, is expensive and only works half the time.  If that's all you had, you'd just have to live with it and be thankful for what you've got.

Now imagine that a much better vehicle had been available all along, for a cheaper price, better gas mileage and ironclad reliability.  Imagine that the government had been keeping this vehicle a secret from you. You'd be pretty upset, wouldn't you?

Well, that's what government is trying to do to us with energy.  We are spilling over with oil, natural gas, and coal, yet the green corporatists insist on cramming down our throats wind, solar and battery powered toy cars that catch fire.  Worse, these immature technologies are unreliable and much more expensive than their time-tested rivals.  Forcing them upon a free and prosperous people requires government intervention!

That's what the green agenda is all about:  Tax and restrict and regulate and harry the fossil fuels industry until it is just as expensive as the green dreams.  If you can't gain the pinnacle on your own merits, just drag everybody else down to your debased level.

That is the difference between capitalism and socialism.  Capitalism raises a society up through competition.  The "Robber Barons" lowered the cost of lighting our homes and traveling as they competed for our business.  Socialism levels everybody flat in the name of equality.

We need to kick Obama and the Pelosicrats to the curb before they destroy the nation.  We have cheap and abundant energy; we'd be crazy not to use it.

Progressives in Retreat

View From the Ridge

The Hopium cloud has dissipated. Only the foul stench of overripe progressivism hangs in the air. Americans having caught pungent nosefuls and are recoiling in horror

Conservatives are now the single largest ideological group in America, according to Gallup.

The Wisconsin Democrats scampering across the state line to Illinois in a futile attempt to dodge reality turned out to be an apt metaphor of the state of American Progressivism. It is in collapse.  On the run.  Reviled, discredited, angry and sullen...

I get the impression that progressives really do believe we should all just fall in line and let the philosopher kings implement Plato's Republic.  I think ordinary Americans sense it as well, and they are repelled. I know I am.

Al Gore as Metaphor:  A Global Collapse

I think progressivism may be facing a global rejection as well. Oh, it will always be around, and could even achieve a new ascendancy thanks to unrepentant global financial predators, but for now it is facing a shameful repudiation, encapsulated nicely in the the discredited "Climate Change/Global Warming" movement.

Gore has the Midas touch in reverse; objects of great value (Nobel prizes, Oscars) turn dull and leaden at his touch. (Walter Russell Mead)

Remember just a few short years ago, before the scandals and the lies, when serious people took the Global Elmer Gantry and his International Climate Change Road Show seriously...

Don't worry children! Reverend Al Gore of the International Church of Gaia will release his chakras! He will sell you carbon credit indulgences so that you may atone for your enviro sins. So throw your trillions and your economies into the volcano so that the earth's temperature will be juuuust riiiight!

The third world kleptocrats volunteering their oppressed masses to play the role of Lazarus in this opera of the absurd, begging for scraps at the table of the rich nations, in order to shame them out of their billions, was a nice filigree.

Here's a hint. Anyone or any organization employing the word "global" or "world" in a serious manner should be avoided. Categorically so when spinning fairy tales about the world being tooooo hot....

Especially when just 20 years ago the cognoscenti told us it was tooooooo cold!

Professor Walter Russell Mead sums up Gore's (and progressivism's) credibility problem:

But grave as that danger is, Al Gore can consume more carbon than whole villages in the developing world. He can consume more electricity than most African schools, incur more carbon debt with one trip in a private plane than most of the earth’s toiling billions will pile up in a lifetime — and he doesn’t worry.

A father of four, he can lecture the world on the perils of overpopulation. Surely, skeptics reason, if the peril were as great as he says and he cares about it as much as he claims, Gore’s sense of civic duty would call him to set an example of conspicuous non-consumption. This general sleeps in a mansion, and lectures the soldiers because they want tents. (The Failure of Al Gore)

Gore's Global theater of high drama has descended into farce, an emblem of the High Church of Progressivism, and Al Gore is its apotheosis.  

Walter Russell Mead - The Death of Global Warming

Walter Russell Mead - The Failure of Al Gore: Part 1

Walter Russell Mead - The Failure of Al Gore Part Deux

American Liberalism is an Incoherent Hodgepodge

Yoinked from Boil the Beast

American Liberalism is a loose confederation odd-ball interest groups.  It has no moral foundation and no philosophical underpinnings.  It is an illogical, immoral, agenda-driven, emotion-laden farrago of fear-mongering and grievance-nursing.






Behold the myriad inconsistencies of American Liberalism:

* Derisively insist their is no God, yet use the teachings of Jesus to defend their redistributionist schemes

* Trumpet free speech for America-haters and pornographers, but not for Christians in the public square or conservative talk show hosts in the free market of ideas

* Denigrate the right to keep and bear arms, which is clearly stated in the constitution, but use obscure clauses to launch multi-trillion dollar statist schemes

* "Pro-Choice" unless it's the food you eat, light bulbs you use in your home, health care options, school you send your kids to, secret ballots for union votes...

* Scream and whine about rightwingchristiantheocrats taking over the country, but defend religious extremists who actually blow things up and kill people, including their own family members

* Deride those of us who cling to our bibles and our Christian faith as dimwitted toothless hicks who want to foist our morality on everyone, yet naively and unthinkingly lap up everything Al Gore and the other liberal high priests tell them.  And insist the rest of us bow down at their altars as well.
  

* Teachers cannot mention God, but liberals insist their dogmatic religious tenets of statism uber alles, multiculturalism, and homosexual fetishism be preached in every classroom. 

Let Them Eat Food Stamps 

Most insidious, liberals would deny a poor mother the money-making opportunity to make burritos and other food items in her own home and then sell them on the street. It's all in the name of food safety and "keeping the flow of the city," dontcha know...

Handmaidens of the state like Jersey actually say stuff like this, never once pausing to consider how "health and safety" red tape serves as a corporate-sponsored barrier to entry into the free market.

Just give that young mother some food stamps, right?  It's so much easier (and enslaving) than giving her economic opportunity.

Protesting Reality

 

The Welfare State is in a Death Spiral, and Liberals Can't Handle the Truth

"The spectacle of government workers, cranky retirees, militant unionists, and mad dog socialists locked arm in arm protesting reality is a sight we'd better get used to."  (Bill Frezza - Our Greek Future)

As Robert Samuelson notes dryly, we are witnessing "the death spiral of the welfare state."  Greece now, with the rest of Europe and the US soon to follow.

Virtually every advanced nation, including the United States, faces the same prospect. Aging populations have been promised huge health and retirement benefits, which countries haven't fully covered with taxes. The reckoning has arrived in Greece, but it awaits most wealthy societies.

Budget deficits and debt are the real problems; and these stem from all the welfare benefits (unemployment insurance, old-age assistance, health insurance) provided by modern governments.

 
Taxing the Rich at 100% Still Won't Pay for the Democratic Socialist Agenda

 The Wall Street Journal notes that Obama has set a post-WWII record for government spending.  His feral beast now consumes 25% of GDP, besting Reagan's highest spending level by three percentage points.  Here are a few salient points from the article:  


$$$ Taxing all millionaires and billionaires at 100%  "yields merely about $938 billion..."

$$$ Taxing the "top 10%, or everyone with income over $114,000 [...] throws up only $3.4 trillion."

And that's assuming these job creators will just lay down and take it as federal bandits rape them and steal their property.  Contrary to wild-eyed liberal fantasies, they won't.

Progressivism is morally, intellectually and financially bankrupt.  From Europe to the United States, there's not enough money in the world to pay for the Utopian agenda.

Further Reading:
The Library of Economics & Liberty article Reaganomics does an excellent job combating the liberal lies about President Reagan's record.