Elizabeth Crum

President Obama’s re-election campaign is up with its first round of TV ads in Nevada this week after being hammered by the American Energy Alliance on gas prices.

Anjeanette Damon has the scoop on the small ad buy in Reno and Las Vegas.

Energy will be one of the issues on which voters are bombarded on the airwaves from now ’til November.

But who is to blame for rising gas prices, really? And what can be done about it?

Currently, 75-80% of the cost of gasoline is driven by petroleum prices while the other 20-25% lies in refining and distribution. The latter can be influenced by U.S. policy to some degree. The former cannot, at least not much (and hardly at all in the short term) because the influencing factors are things outside our control such as OPEC supply decisions, tensions in the Middle East and seasonal variants.

Policy leverage may be possible in the long run as U.S. demand declines and supply increases, but our influence lies more on the demand side (23 percent of world total consumption) than the supply side (9 percent of world production). Policies that reduce demand (like pushing alternative fuels or the construction and use of mass transportation) or increase supply (drill, baby, drill) or some dual front (“all of the above”) effort are where we must head if we really want to influence oil prices in the long run.

Disagreements about these things tend to be more about degree than any all-or-nothing stance (except by the extremists on both ends, but who listens to them?)

Where policy makers seem to differ the most in the national argument on energy is re: the environmental consequences of energy production and use. Energy exploration and production generates high-paying employment but also generates environmental costs that are not always obvious in the price system.

Conservatives say the economic advantages of more/faster/better fossil fuel energy far outweigh concerns about carbon emissions or occasional oil spills, and anyhow India and China are building new coal-fired energy plants every 5 minutes so it’s futile to fight that battle even if one believed in it.

Liberals and greenies say it’s a moral imperative to wean the nation off carbon, even if it costs us all a little (or a lot) more.

And never the twain shall meet. Or so it seems right now. The energy ad wars shall wage on, in Nevada and nationally, and the best narrative will win in November while voters will no doubt continue to lose at the gas pump no matter who is president.

Breitbart found some video of Obama speaking on health care from a 2003 speech to the AFL-CIO.

Here is the money quote:

“I happen to be a proponent of a single payer universal health care program. I see no reason why the United States of America, the wealthiest country in the history of the world, spending 14 percent of its Gross National Product on health care cannot provide basic health insurance to everybody. And that’s what Jim is talking about when he says everybody in, nobody out. A single payer health care plan, a universal health care plan. And that’s what I’d like to see. But as all of you know, we may not get there immediately. Because first we have to take back the White House, we have to take back the Senate, and we have to take back the House.”

“Wow.”

The White House response to this?

A three-minute (mis)information video featuring Linda Douglass, a former ABC news correspondent and now the WH Office of Health Reform communications director, sitting in front of a computer screen showing Drudge’s front page and saying the video and site headline is “taking sentences and phrases out of context, and they’re cobbling them together to leave a very false impression.”

Why not try to explain why Obama has changed his mind, rather than denying what we just saw him say ON VIDEO in a speech just a few years ago…?

This NY Post health care op-ed includes some truly appalling commentary by Dr. Ezekiel (Rahm’s brother) Emanuel and Dr. David Blumenthal.

As I was reading the piece I had a wrenching, visceral reaction.  Orwellian in nature.

These people actually believe they are adequately equipped to make not only “minor” but also life-and-death health care decisions for the elderly, the infirm, and the terminal.  That they have the right to say when a person does, or does not, need or deserve health care – and to what degree.  That they can and should decide which technologies are “appropriate” and which are too costly depending on the age and condition of the patient.

They knowingly and deliberately wish to suppress and subvert the will of family, and of the individual.  And they do it in the name of money:  cost savings, greater efficiencies.

It is horrifying.  Because the only thing more agonizing and torturous than having to make a life-or-death and/or quality-of-life choice about the care of a loved one, or yourself, is to be taken out of the process and have some computer algorithm or committee make the decision for you.

If these monsters are allowed to proceed — what else do you call men so misguided and monomaniacal that they sit in their mahogany-trimmed offices and play at being gods with clear conscience? — we will find ourselves living that horrifying vision that was once but a fiction.

(As an aside, Orwell’s heirs should sue Emanuel, Blumenthal, President Obama, and two-thirds of Congress for copyright infringement over health care language.)

And we should all come out of our slumber before we find ourselves in a nightmare from which we cannot wake.

Update: Fred Thompson interviews the writer of the above-named NY Post piece, Betsy McCaughey (8 minutes).

She said that on page 425 of the House bill is language making it mandatory that every five years, people in Medicare will have a required counseling session that will educate them about how to end their life sooner (how to refuse nutrition and medication, and how to approach hospice care).  And that some parts of the bill dictate that the elderly will be faced with denials of care based on their age.  It’s called “comparative effectiveness.”

Much has been said about Obama’s hurried, we-must-do-it-now approach to health care reform.  I don’t want the rush, and further, I think rushing through this is a really good way to ensure we end up with some really bad policy.

Now CNN’s Dana Bash is reporting that Harry Reid said there will be no Senate vote until after August on health care.

But, from Ohio, Ed Henry reports that a “senior administration official” said Reid’s comment does not change the president’s plans:  He still wants votes in both houses before August recess.

H/T:  K-Lo @ The Corner

Update:  Mr. Crum just called me and said he thinks Harry Reid’s statement was made with one eye on the polls and one on Reid’s 2010 senatorial campaign.  If a bill is rushed through and things don’t end well, Reid can say he tried to slow things down.  If things do turn out well, he can still point to how cautious he was.

I got three LOLs and one verge-of-tears moment out of this video.  It’s a joke, but my love for my country, and my desire for truth and transparency in government, is not.  Watch, laugh, cry, and then decide what YOU can do about it.

I am shocked and outraged.

It is well-established historical and political fact that America does not negotiate with terrorists regarding the release of hostages.  We do this so terrorists will not be emboldened to take even more hostages  in order to have even more of their demands met.

But apparently, about two weeks ago, Obama authorized the release of an Iran-backed terrorist who is responsible for the 2007 abduction/murder of American troops (five murdered, four of them after being kidnapped) in Karbala.  And did so as barter for five British hostages.  Or rather, for two dead bodies of former British hostages – because that is what we actually got back.  Two corpses.  In exchange for the freedom of a terrorist who murdered American soldiers.   

Andy McCarthy has all the details – including a very plausible theory about how Obama’s decision might be tied into some Guantanamo prisoners being sent to Bermuda.  Here’s the money quote from his piece:

Back in May 2008, in a speech before the Israeli Knesset, President Bush derided the “foolish delusion” of unidentified, naïve politicians who “seem to believe we should negotiate with terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along.” Exhibiting a thin-skinned consciousness of guilt, Sen. Barack Obama assumed Bush had been referring to him, and lashed out: “George Bush knows that I have never supported engagement with terrorists.”

President Obama is now way beyond mere support of such engagement. Under his leadership, and even as the mullahs who have been at war with the United States for 30 years are engaged in a Tiananmen-style crackdown, Obama is neck-deep in terrorist-for-hostages negotiations with Iran-backed killers who have American blood on their hands.

A WaTi write-up is here.  Senators Jeff Sessions of Alabama and Jon Kyl of Arizona have written a letter demanding answers.  I would think so.  And where is the LameStream Media?  Still under the ether…

I’m a sucker for Monty Python references.  And this one recalls one of my favorite scenes from The Holy Grail while cleverly poking fun at socialized health care.

My very favorite scene from Grail is this one (dialogue with Graham Chapman as KING ARTHUR, Michael Palin as DENNIS THE PEASANT, and Terry Jones as the WOMAN).

Available on YouTube here.