Protecting Our Borders From the Scourge of Conservatism

Perhaps you are as tired as I am of paying $2+ a gallon for gas, a situation that isn’t going to get any better now that we’re heading into summer and the heavy driving season. It’s a fact that, as you step up to the pump with the realization that it’s going to cost you the better part of $50 or more to fill your tank, there’s a Democrat to blame for it. Many of the current standard-bearers of the Democratic Party are environmentalist wackos with a fresh polished coat and tie patina to hide their radical enviro-wacko bent. They could give a rat’s ass how much you have to pay for a gallon of gas and they can afford to pay the high price of gas. In fact, high gas prices play right into their agenda.

How long has Al Gore’s earth been in the balance now? At least since he first ran for the vice presidency. If we were to listen to Al twelve years ago, global warming should have caused all of us here in the Midwest to be about an hour’s drive from an Atlantic Ocean beach. (Okay, so that’s a slight exaggeration.) The solution was for us peasants to be driving around in little two-cycle go-carts that get 80 MPG. He, of course, would still be entitled to his 10,000-pound stretch limo by virtue of his station in life and the fact that he’s so much smarter than us to come up with the cutting edge notion that the peasants should be driving half-assed Fiats.

Likewise for the last Democratic presidential candidate. Remember that one? The guy who “didn’t own an SUV, his family did”. Yes, John F’in Kerry was and is all in favor of sitting idly by wringing his hands about screwing up the environment just as long as he’s able to get enough fuel to fill his billionaire sugar-mama’s Gulfstream V.

And then we have current feminazi and future apparent front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2008. Yes, we’re talking about Hillary Clinton, the woman for whom the chicken plants, pig farms and redneck charm of Arkansas just wasn’t good enough. The woman who, no sooner than she had left the White House was “movin’ on up” to that toney residence in Chappaqua. You can bet she don’t drive (or get driven) around in no Honda Civic. This recently-minted millionaire, liberal-elitist pig can afford to pay the $2.50 for a gallon of gas. Let the peasants mortgage the shack to fill the tank, she’ll get along just fine. Which explains why she can afford to vote against drilling in the Artic National Wildlife Range.

And what of DNC Chair Howie “the Screamer” Dean? The good doctor, radical leftist that he is, was opposed to any form of energy independence besides “windmills” and “conservation” when he was a failed presidential candidate and you can bet he still is now. I don’t know what type of car he drives but you can bet it isn’t a Toyota Prius or Honda Insight – those little rice burners that get 50 MPG.

Al Gore was the leader of these enviro wacko politicians. He’s been on the cutting edge of the “don’t drill in ANWR” movement, standing firmly in the way of increasing our energy independence for nigh on 25 years now and, of course, the two previously mentioned Democratic Party standard-bearers marched firmly in lock step, opposing any action that would give us even a modicum of independence from our huge dependence on foreign oil. And so the rest of the of the Democratic Party goes – a scant three Democratic senators voted in favor of drilling in ANWR last month and votes in favor of greater energy independence in the House have pretty much been split along party lines with the majority of the Democrats – you guessed it – voting against drilling in ANWR. Kerry, Gore, Clinton and the rest of these obstructionist boobs, of course prefer that we (meaning you and I) “conserve”:

Problem is we already do a great job with conservation. You want conservation, dude? You got it:

· Refrigerators and other household appliances use 65% less electricity than they did 30 years ago.

· Cars get two and three times the mileage they did thirty years ago and yet in many cases, are twice as powerful

· The days of 90+% efficient heating and cooling systems arrived years ago and advances in design and insulation have provided for dramatically more efficient homes. In fact, utilities regularly subsidize customers who upgrade the efficiency of their heating and cooling systems and improve the insulation in their homes.

· Manufacturing operations have also improved their efficiencies to their benefit by not only reducing their power (and therefore fuel) consumption and therefore, costs but their detrimental effects on the environment as well.

Did these advances happen because Al Gore and his ilk whined? No they didn’t. They happened because of government regulation under a Republican administration and the desire of companies to remain competitive in a free market. What would have happened to a Ford or a Chevy had they not seen the writing on the wall and started building the sleeker, more efficient vehicles people wanted to buy? They wouldn’t be around today, that’s for sure.

But still the whiners whine. And as we have discovered, we have met the environmentalist wackos and they are more than the leftist fringe: They are the face of the institutional Democratic Party. The former hippies who used to march around in their gunny sacks with their hairy pits and no make-up (have you seen pictures of Hillary in her early-70s law school days?) protesting “the war” and every environmentalist cause under the sun have grown up, discovered money, power, deodorant and make-up and taken up the same old leftist causes in their three-piece suits. And we’re right in the spot these former smelly hippies want us to be in – over a barrel, begging for oil and talking of conservation. Plenty of oil at a price these liberal-elitist hippie snobs can pay and little enough oil at a high enough price that they can ride around in their limos while preaching to us peasants about conservation. Brian P. Simpson does a superb job of summing up the attitude of the environmentalist wackos it in a recent column, of all places, the San Francisco Chronicle:

And make no mistake: Al Gore, John Kerry, Hillary Clinton and their ilk are no less environmentalist wackos than the above referenced nutcases who see fit to subjugate the good of all mankind to the life of a snail darter. Which is the reason why these folks stand foursquare against new oil exploration and building new oil refineries. High gas prices enable these folks to continue to bang the conservation drum when the history of the last thirty years has been all about increasing vastly the efficiency and conservation of every electric or gas-powered device. Stonewalling on the issue of the safe exploration of oil in Alaska for the past 20 years has enabled them oppose it based on the fact that it will be ten years after we begin drilling before we will see a drop of oil out of ANWR. Of course if we would have begun drilling 20 years ago the ANWR oil fields would have been producing as much oil as we get from the Middle East right now.

There is no reason for them to oppose exploring new sources of oil. The experiment with drilling on the North Slope of Alaska has been a smashing success for the last 30 years. When is the last time you heard of major environmental damage being caused by the Tran-Alaska Oil Pipeline? (And we're not talking about an accident caused by a drunken tanker captain, we're talking about damage directly attributable to the pipeline itself.) You haven’t because it’s never happened. The leftists know as well as the rest of us do that new technology has made it possible to extract oil with minimal environmental damage. But still these folks stand in the way of ensuring the free flow of oil at reasonable market prices. And we pay for it at the pump. Next time you belly up to the pump facing the prospect of taking out a second mortgage to pay for your fill-up, thank a Democrat.