posted March 16, 2011 11:23 PM            

Anyone who "comes" for me won't be returning to headquarters.

posted March 16, 2011 11:26 PM            

Is it really any surprise that oil and gas prices are surging toward the record highs we saw in 2008 just prior to the economic collapse? Despite the President’s strange assertions in his press conference last week, his Administration is not a passive observer to the trends that have inflated oil prices to dangerous levels. His war on domestic oil and gas exploration and production has caused us pain at the pump, endangered our already sluggish economic recovery, and threatened our national security.

The evidence of the President’s anti-drilling mentality and his culpability in the high gas prices hurting Americans is there for all to see. The following is not even an exhaustive list:

Exhibit A: His drilling moratorium. Guided by politics and pure emotion following the Gulf spill instead of peer-reviewed science or defensible law, the President used the power of his executive order to impose a deepwater drilling moratorium. The Administration even ignored a court order halting his moratorium. And what is the net result of the President’s (in)actions? A large drilling company was forced to declare bankruptcy, the economy of the region has been hobbled, and at least 7 rigs moved out of the Gulf area to other parts of the world while many others remain idle. Is it any surprise that oil production in the Gulf of Mexico is expected to fall by 240,000 bbl/d in 2011 alone?

But that’s just the Gulf. There’s also the question of a moratorium on the development of Alaska’s Outer Continental Shelf. It seems the Obama Administration can’t agree with itself on whether it imposed a moratorium there or not. The White House claims that they didn’t, but their own Department of the Interior let slip that they did. To clear up this mess, Gov. Parnell decided to sue the DOI to get a solid answer because such a federal OCS drilling moratorium would violate federal law.

Exhibit B: His 2012 budget. The President used his 2012 budget to propose the elimination of several vital oil and natural gas production tax incentives. Eliminating these incentives will discourage energy companies from completing exploratory projects, resulting in higher energy costs for all Americans – and not just at the pump. According to one study mentioned in a recent Wall Street Journal op-ed, eliminating the deduction for drilling costs “could increase natural gas prices by 50 cents per thousand cubic feet,” which would translate to “an increased cost to consumers of $11.5 billion per year in the form of higher natural gas prices.”

Exhibit C: His anti-drilling regulatory policies. The U.S. Geological Survey found that the area north of the Arctic Circle has an estimated 90 billion barrels of technically recoverable oil and 1,670 trillion cubic feet of technically recoverable natural gas, one third of which is in Alaskan territory. That’s our next Prudhoe Bay right there. According to one industry study, allowing Royal Dutch Shell to tap these reserves in Alaska’s Chukchi and Beaufort seas would create an annual average of 54,700 jobs nationwide with a $145 billion total payroll and generate an additional $193 billion in total revenues to local, state, and federal governments over 50 years. This would be great news if only the federal government would allow Shell to drill there. But it won’t. It’s been five years since Shell purchased the lease to develop these fields, but it’s been mired in a regulatory funk courtesy of the Obama Administration. After investing $3.5 billion in exploration programs (a significant portion of which went to ensuring responsible spill response and prevention), Shell announced last month that it has given up hope of obtaining the required permits to conduct exploratory drilling this year. That means no jobs and no billions in oil revenue from the Arctic anytime soon thanks to this Administration. Let’s stop and think about this for a moment. Right now Beltway politicos are quibbling over cutting $61 billion from our dangerously bloated $3.7 trillion budget. Allowing drilling in the Chukchi and Beaufort seas will enrich federal coffers by $167 billion without raising our taxes. If we let Harry Reid keep his “cowboy poetry,” would the White House consider letting us drill?

Taken altogether, it’s hard to deny that the Obama Administration is anti-drilling. The President may try to suggest that the rise in oil prices has nothing to do with him, but the American people won’t be fooled. Before we saw any protests in the Middle East, increased global demand led to a significant rise in oil prices; but the White House stood idly by watching the prices go up and allowing America to remain increasingly dependent on imports from foreign regimes in dangerously unstable parts of the world.

This was no accident. Through a process of what candidate Obama once called “gradual adjustment,” American consumers have seen prices at the pump rise 67 percent since he took office. Let’s not forget that in September 2008, candidate Obama’s Energy Secretary in-waiting said: “Somehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe.” That’s one campaign promise they’re working hard to fulfill! Last week, the British Telegraph reported that the price of petrol in the UK hit £6 a gallon – which comes to about $9.70. If you think $4 a gallon is bad now, just wait till the next crisis causes oil prices to “necessarily” skyrocket. Meanwhile, the vast undeveloped reserves that could help to keep prices at the pump affordable remain locked up because of President Obama’s deliberate unwillingness to drill here and drill now.

Hitting the American people with higher gas prices like this is essentially a hidden tax and a transfer of wealth to foreign regimes who are providing us the energy we refuse to provide for ourselves. Like inflation, higher energy prices are a hidden tax on Americans who are struggling to make ends meet. And these high gas prices will be felt in the form of higher food prices due to higher transportation costs. Energy is connected to everything in our economy. Access to affordable and secure energy is key to economic growth, which in turn is key to job growth. Energy is the building block of our economy. The President is purposely weakening that building block and weakening our country.

2012 can’t come soon enough.

- Sarah Palin

posted March 17, 2011 10:37 AM            

No!

When crude oil hit $149 per barrel and gasoline hit $4 per gallon in some parts of the US.....

Bush, by executive order, removed the moratorium on offshore drilling for oil and in short order crude oil prices fell out of the sky to as low as $33 per barrel.

But then, Bush actually has a brain and understands cause and effect.

posted March 17, 2011 12:41 PM              

well said, jwhop. bush did NO wrong, ever.

and the price of gas has not reached $4 gal even here in cali where it tends to run higher than the "average"...

so we are now convicting people even before things happen, you really are progressing sir!!

posted March 17, 2011 01:56 PM            

so we are now convicting people even before things happen, you really are progressing sir!!"...katatonic

Your statement on the price of gas is as accurate as your usual katatonic. You always live up to my expectations.

$4.00 per gallon in Massachusetts

posted March 17, 2011 06:42 PM              

maybe our "leftist" state has something your right-in-the-dumpster state does not? why is florida the most expensive now? not because of taxes!?!

posted March 17, 2011 11:56 PM            

No katatonic; this is what you said:

"and the price of gas has not reached $4 gal even here in cali where it tends to run higher than the "average"...

Obviously, you were wrong about that.

Oh, and the stock market wasn't up today...because of a jobs report. That's old news.

The stock market was down big three straight days..Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday and today, there was a modest rally....having nothing to do with a days old jobs report.

posted March 18, 2011 12:21 PM              

the headline runs: palin now as unpopular as pelosi...tsk tsk

and you're right, jwhop, gas has reached $4 here if you are an undiscerning buyer, however you can still get cheaper, and i don't mean ethanol..

posted March 18, 2011 12:39 PM            

Got to love the desperation of leftist press morons and establishment so called republicans..RINOs actually.

They think they're going to choose the Republican candidate for Prez but it's not going to happen.

In the meantime, it's obvious whom they fear above all others. It's not Romney. It's not Huckster. It's not Newt. It's not Daniels. It's not Paul. It's not Pawlenty. It's not Jindal. It's not Barbour.

It's Sarah Palin, hands down.

posted March 18, 2011 01:57 PM            

katatonic, you were wrong...Period.

You keep making excuses...like..."if you are an undiscerning buyer" AND "however you can still get cheaper".

Your original comment was.."the price of gas has not reached $4".

No doubt an attempt to show some were getting a head start on "forecasting" $4 gasoline. No doubt an attempt to take the heat off the ass of your favorite Marxist Socialist O'Bomber.

posted March 19, 2011 07:47 PM            

quote:

---

• 
  At present (Sept 2010), the Mastercard merchant rule is located in Section 5.11, Prohibited Practices. While surcharges are not a violation of federal law, they are illegal in 10 states. (See the discussion page for a list)
• 
  From MasterCard's merchant rules - Visa has similar wording in their agreement.
  5.9.2 Charges to Cardholders
  A Merchant must not directly or indirectly require any Cardholder to pay a surcharge or any part of any Merchant discount or any contemporaneous finance charge in connection with a Transaction. A Merchant may provide a discount to its customers for cash payments. A Merchant is permitted to charge a fee (such as a bona fide commission, postage, expedited service or convenience fees, and the like) if the fee is imposed on all like transactions regardless of the form of payment used, or as the Corporation has expressly permitted in writing. For purposes of this Rule:
  1. A surcharge is any fee charged in connection with a Transaction that is not charged if another payment method is used.
  2. The Merchant discount fee is any fee a Merchant pays to an Acquirer so that the Acquirer will acquire the Transactions of the Merchant.
  10A.3 Charges to Cardholders
  Rule 5.9.2 does not apply in the European Economic Area.
  If a Merchant applies a surcharge for payment by Card, the amount or method of calculation of the surcharge must be clearly indicated to the Cardholder at the POI location and must bear a reasonable relationship to the Merchant's cost of accepting Cards.

---

posted March 20, 2011 11:14 AM            

The call by the Arab League for Western military intervention in an Arab state — in this case asking that a UN “no-fly zone” be imposed over Libya – is not only without precedent but it puts in formal terms what Governor Palin stated three weeks ago should have been America’s response to the political and humanitarian crisis now unfolding there.

The former GOP vice presidential candidate was being interviewed on February 23rd on national television by Sean Hannity on a range of issues. On the Libya crisis, she proposed a no-fly-zone to protect the armed and un-armed opposition to the Qaddafi regime. Mrs. Palin’s formulation had been blogged about for nearly a week when it was echoed by the man who, before the Iraq war, had led the Iraq democratic movement in exile, Ahmed Chalabi.

A long-time foe of Saddam Hussein who has emerged as a leading figure in Iraq’s democratically elected legislature. Mr Chalabi recounted in the Wall Street Journal how President George H. W. Bush’s 1991 call for a popular uprising against Saddam had been heeded by the Iraqi people, only to have Saddam then murder some 30,000 of them from helicopter gunships while the Western world stood by.

Not again, Mr. Chalabi pleaded in his essay, and explicitly demanded a Libyan no-fly-zone. But it now it seems Qaddafi will be allowed to repeat a Saddam-style repression, even as President Obama, and the rest of what he likes to call the international community, is “watching carefully.”

Mrs. Palin also continues to link America’s energy policy — a realm in which she has experience — and U.S. foreign and anti-terrorism policies. She recognizes that the ongoing transfer of billions of U.S. petro-dollars to unstable or even hostile Mideast regimes has, since the formation in 1973 of the Organization of Petoleum Exporting Countries, been an drain on U.S. financial resources.

In a critique of Mr. Obama’s energy policies published yesterday at about the same time the Arab League was adopting her prescription for a Libya no-fly-zone, Mrs. Palin laid out how the president’s “war on domestic oil and gas exploration and production has caused us pain at the pump, endangered our already sluggish economic recovery, and threatened our national security.” Nor is Gov. Palin’s insight into complex international issues limited to areas of her immediate expertise.

The Washington Post’s Jennifer Rubin — certainly no knee-jerk advocate for Sarah Palin — wrote just a few weeks ago that Palin turns out to have been correct in the prediction she made to Barbara Walters, in a much-noted November 2009 interview. Palin stated she was opposed to Obama’s opposition to Israel’s settlement policies because “[m]ore and more Jewish people will be flocking to Israel in the days and weeks and months ahead.” Now, as Rubin noted, Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics confirms that the pace of immigration to Israel rose 14% to 16,633 from the level in 2009, most coming from Russia or America.

Mrs. Palin will be in New Delhi later this week delivering the keynote address to the annual India Today Conclave. She has been asked to speak on “What America Means to Me.” She will speak as a crisis is simmering between America and Pakistan, India’s nuclear-armed neighbor to the northwest and will be the first high profile trip by a potential Republican contender to South Asia.

More broadly, Mrs. Palin’s address in India will be another step in the growing outline of what might be called The Palin Doctrine. It contrasts sharply with the foreign policy being conducted, if that is the word, by President Obama, who is perplexing not only the Arab world, to which he reached out in his Cairo speech at the start of his presidency, but even his own supporters in the liberal camp, and many in between, who are upset by what might be called his propensity for inaction. It’s an inaction that suggests the Arab League won’t be the only institution that might find itself surprised by the logic of the alert Alaskan.

posted March 25, 2011 12:35 PM            

“Let’s keep pivoting around media bias, and not get distracted with the vulgar personal shots. Call out lies and set the record straight, but always keep the ball moving. No one ever won a game only playing defense.”

Upon my return from an outstanding and productive trip to India and Israel, I’ve been inundated with requests to respond to petty comments made in the media the past few days, including one little fella’s comment which decent people would find degrading. (I won’t bother responding to it though, because it was made by he who reminds me of an annoying little mosquito found zipped up in your tent; he can’t do any harm, but buzzes around annoyingly until it’s time to give him the proverbial slap.)

I’ve given this a lot of thought, and I’d like to share my thoughts on the never-ending issue of media bias.

When it comes to responding to the media, the standard warning is: Don’t pick a fight with people who buy ink by the barrel because calling out the media and holding them accountable is a risky endeavor. Too often the first instinct is to ignore blatant media bias, crudeness, and outright lies, and just hope the media instigator will grow up and provide fairer coverage if you bite your tongue and not challenge the false reporting of an openly hostile press. But I’ve never bought into that. That’s waving the white flag. I just can’t do it because I have too much respect for the importance of a free press as a cornerstone of our democracy, and I have great respect for the men and women in uniform who sacrifice so much to defend that First Amendment right. Media, with freedom comes responsibility.

Friends, too often conservatives or Republicans in general come across as having the fighting instinct of sheep. I don’t. I was raised to believe that you don’t retreat when you’re on solid ground; so even though it often seems like I’m armed with just a few stones and a sling against a media giant, I’ll use those small resources to do what I can to set the record straight. The truth is always worth fighting for. Doing so isn’t whining or “playing the victim card”; it’s defending the truth in fairness to those who seek accurate information. I’ll keep attempting to correct misinformation and falsehoods about myself and my record, and I will certainly never shy from defending others who are unfairly attacked. This is in the name of justice.

But two decades in politics have taught me that when it comes to picking battles, often it’s best to ignore the truly petty, ugly personal media shots because engaging in a counter argument with disreputable, intolerant people doesn’t vindicate me; it merely gives those people the attention they seek. It wastes my time and it distracts from what we should focus on.

We must always remember the big picture. The media has always been biased. Conservatives – and especially conservative women – have always been held to a different standard and attacked. This is nothing new. Lincoln was mocked and ridiculed. Reagan was called an amiable dunce, a dangerous warmonger, a rightwing fanatic, and the insult list goes on and on. (But somehow Reagan still managed to win two major electoral landslides, and this was in the days before the internet and talk radio when all he had were three biased network news channels spinning reports on him. If he could do so much with so little and still be such an optimistic and positive leader, then surely we can succeed with the new media tools at our disposal.)

Let’s just acknowledge that commonsense conservatives must be stronger and work that much harder because of the obvious bias. And let’s be encouraged with a sense of poetic justice by knowing that the “mainstream” media isn’t mainstream anymore. That’s why I call it “lamestream,” and the LSM is becoming quite irrelevant, as it is no longer the sole gatekeeper of information.

Let’s keep pivoting around media bias, and not get distracted with the vulgar personal shots. Even with limited time we can try to call out lies and set the record straight, but always keep the ball moving. No one ever won a game only playing defense.

I’ll keep correcting false reporting, and I’ll defend others to the hilt; but I won’t spend any more precious, limited time responding to personal, vulgar, sexist venom spewed my way.

Today, our country is faced with seemingly overwhelming challenges. We have an unsustainable and immoral $14 trillion debt problem which, combined with a self-inflicted energy crisis, could bring America to her knees. The President of the United States is manipulating an energy supply by refusing to develop our U.S. energy resources. Shouldn’t that be the media’s focus today? Wouldn’t you like more information on the deficit that for last month alone was the highest in our history at $223 billion? That single month’s deficit was more than the entire deficit for the year 2007! We still have a 16% real unemployment rate. We had 2.9 million home foreclosures last year alone, with this year predicted to be even worse. Americans who are struggling to make ends meet are now hit by rising food and energy prices – exacerbated by the Fed’s decision to drop that $600 billion money bomb known as QE2 on us. Gas has already hit $4 per gallon in some areas. And let’s not forget that our men and women in uniform are deployed far from home today. From Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, to who-knows-where tomorrow under a clouded, confused Obama Doctrine, our armed forces are in harm’s way, defending our interests and protecting our freedoms.

Now these are the real concerns to Americans. These are times when real leadership is needed. We must never be distracted from these real concerns.

Petty comments from the small-minded are used to distract. Stay focused, America. Don’t wave any white flag. Simply put, let’s spend our precious time on causes that are worthy.

posted March 27, 2011 11:17 AM            

There are more than 50,000 oil wells drilled in the Gulf of Mexico and 1, "one" blows out.

Wow, as everyone can see, that's an unacceptable risk/reward ratio.

One environmental wacko publishes a paper saying "blowout preventers don't work" and suddenly, all the "anti-civilization" sing along crowd start screeching in unison.

It never, ever occurs to these non-thinkers that if their policies were adopted, tens or hundreds of millions of people around the world would starve to death.

They're soooo compassionate.

posted March 27, 2011 02:26 PM              

we can make fuel from all kinds of resources that don't demand drilling thousands of feet down in the ocean, spilling oil on endless acres of pristine land, risking people's lives and livellihoods on a REGULAR BASIS...