Addressing the Energy Problem

The high price of energy is due largely, but not entirely, to the fact that supply is not keeping up with demand. The Democrats have proposed a number of measures to reduce demand (conservation, moving toward alternative sources of energy), a number of measures that would reduce supply even further (taxing oil companies, nationalizing oil refineries and companies - see, for instance, here), and some which just seem both bizarre and desperate (suing OPEC).

Barack Obama speaks for most Democrats when he acknowledges that he's actually in favor of high energy prices (See his response at the 2:30 mark of this interview), he just wishes the prices would have risen more gradually. The left wants high energy prices in hopes they'll encourage the development of energy alternatives, but Obama advocates in the CNBC interview that to mitigate the impact of high fuel costs the government give people a check to help them pay their energy bills. It's hard to understand how high prices will encourage conservation and alternative energy sources if people are going to be given money to offset the higher prices.

The Republican solution to our energy crisis is to increase supply until we can develop alternatives to petroleum. This means building more refineries, building more nuclear plants, and drilling for the oil that lies both off our shores and within our borders.

What a pickle we're in: The Republicans have the better ideas but they lack leadership, including, sadly, in the White House (see Michelle Malkin's piece on this here). The Democrats have strong leadership but they lack good ideas. Would that we could have the best of both parties.

Maybe that's a reason to vote for McCain - he's essentially a Democrat who has come to see the need to drill offshore (but, oddly, not in ANWR) and wants to build more nuclear power plants. Now that's a unity candidate.

RLC

Mythologizing

Ben Johnson at FrontPage Mag summarizes the Left's narrative of the last eight years under George Bush:

"President Select" George W. Bush stole the 2000 election after his daddy's Supreme Court justices stopped the Florida election boards from counting all the votes. When he got into office, he did not make terrorism a top priority but immediately began dividing the nation along political lines. After the terrorist attacks of 9/11, the entire country came together in unity to get those who perpetrated this atrocity, and we stayed united as we fought al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. But soon Bush and his neocon allies took our eye off the ball and used the attacks as a pretext to invade Iraq based on lies. Administration officials pressured CIA analysts, twisted intelligence, and insisted Saddam Hussein was an "imminent threat" who had sponsored 9/11. Bush lied that Saddam had WMD stockpiles and invented a story about him trying to buy nuclear material in Niger. But there were never any WMDs; Iraq had no ties to terrorists at all, much less al-Qaeda; and our presence in Iraq is drawing these terrorists to Iraq. (The CIA did not misinform him, because it is an instrument of ruling class hegemony and probably puts manganese into the crack it sells in black neighborhoods, when it's not blowing up levees in New Orleans.) The administration's perpetual campaign mode had them slur anyone who got in their way, questioning the patriotism of anyone who opposed the war and revealing Valerie Plame's identity when Ambassador Joseph Wilson told the truth about them. Bush even declassified sensitive information in the NIE to punish his political enemies. Ultimately, a jury convicted Scooter Libby of fixing Iraq intel to get us into war. Our soldiers - who are too poor and uneducated to help getting stuck in Iraq - are caught in the middle of a civil war. Even though the American people overwhelming want an immediate withdrawal from Iraq and voted for it in 2006, the cowardly Democrats keep passing funding bills and ignoring the will of the people. The Surge has failed, and our best option is to redeploy within six months, even if genocide follows.

Johnson argues that every single assertion in this narrative is either misleading or false. For anyone confused about why this country seems so politically divided today it might be salutary to take a few minutes to read his essay.

RLC

Haditha

Of the eight Marines who were charged with committing an atrocity in the Iraqi town of Haditha, seven have been exonerated or had the charges dismissed. One remains to be tried. I haven't seen much about this in the MSM, a large portion of which was ready to march these young men to the gallows two years ago. You might also remember the execrable words of Congressman John Murtha who publicly pronounced the Marines guilty of murder: "Our troops overreacted because of the pressure on them, and they killed innocent civilians in cold blood."

HT: Ramirez

Michelle Malkin documents not only Murtha's slanders but also those of Keith Olbermann, The New York Times, and The Nation magazine, all of whom tried to turn Haditha into an Iraqi version of My Lai which was a genuine atrocity from the Vietnam war.

We shall await an apology from these people for their willingness to publicly and repeatedly assume the worst of our young men, but I doubt very much whether any of them would even consider an apology. They ruin reputations and lives for a living, why start apologizing for it now?

RLC