It’s “Little Ricky’s Gas Pains” Thursday!

I seem to recall that Former Senator Man-On-Dog concocted some nonsense that I responded to shortly before we traveled north to the Vine-yaaad (where, as I noted earlier, we saw “smart cars” all over the place), and now, he is poised to “drill” us with more stupidity, if you will (from here, and I have to admit that it gives my liberal heart a bit of a jump to see him getting flayed in the comments section over it)…

Democrats, including Barack Obama, support increasing taxes and regulatory costs (environmental) on energy producers and consumers (you), limiting exploration for new oil and natural-gas supplies, and mandating conservation. Liberals like Obama have long argued for higher gas prices to force conservation and reduce emissions. The only concern he has expressed recently is that prices have not gone up gradually and that the sudden spike has hit Americans hard.

It's no surprise, then, that the High-Priced-Energy Party has focused on finding a scapegoat for the rapid rise in prices. The culprits? For starters, greedy Wall Street speculators. So, the High-Priced-Energy Party tried to pass a don't-blame-us bill that further regulates the energy futures market, even though the trading activity on these exchanges during the crisis is at or below normal levels. Interestingly, the bill doesn't cover gold or silver speculators, whose commodities have seen similar price spikes.

Who the $#@! cares about gold or silver? Can I pump either of those commodities into my gas tank? So bloody stoo-pid!...

And yes, Obama calls for going after speculators as Little Ricky snidely notes (though in no way does he advocate increasing the gasoline tax on consumers – nice try, former Senator “Eye Of Mordor”), but for the reality perspective, please click on this link and find out the reason why.

If you do, you'll find that Obama advocates doing everything possible to control the manipulation of gas prices by the oil futures market, as well as doing everything legally possible to encourage our geniuses in the energy biz to drill on land they’ve already leased, about 68 million acres I believe – folks who, somehow, didn’t see the increase in demand from India and China coming and thus act with speed and resolve to develop our alternative energy markets (and if you don’t want to believe me or Obama, fine – try believing a “liberal” like T. Boone Pickens here).

Basically, this Congress is hardly perfect, but again, you can’t blame them for this (gas was $1.86 a gallon when Dubya and his pals were installed into the White House by the Supreme Court, if you’ll recall).

And another thing: because the “oh, we should be ripping apart our coastlines for oil exploration and inflicting God knows how much environmental damage for the sake of a few more drops of black gold to lower the pump price” crowd insists of blathering this idiotic talking point, I confess that I’m getting a bit winded from refuting it so often. So instead of pointing out that idiocy yet again, I will link here instead to an interview with another “liberal,” and that would be Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger of Caa-Lee-Four-Nee-Aah, who, all snark aside, makes the best argument I’ve heard to date as to why no amount of coasting drilling will make gas cheaper any time soon.

Little Ricky also tells us…

Why, you might ask, are energy companies not drilling on current leaseholds? Because they discovered there isn't sufficient oil or gas on these lands to justify drilling. So, the Democrats' second answer to high energy prices is to force energy companies to drill, but only on unprofitable poor-producing fields.

The High-Priced-Energy Democrats have used this unused-leases canard to block the More-Energy-Now Republicans' offshore-drilling amendment, and why not? It's a high-octane blend of politics and policy for them. High-Priced-Energy Democrats score cheap political points by beating up on Wall Street and Big Oil while blocking any price-lowering increase in domestic supplies of oil and natural gas. Neat if you don't have to worry about filling your tank or heating your home.

Santorum’s baiting rhetoric notwithstanding, I should note that, in an effort to find out more on the whole “what’s going on with the 68 million acres” question, I came across this link from factcheck.org.

After reading the article a few times, I should note that Obama was apparently wrong to claim that no activity is taking place on some of that land. However, it is highly unclear as to what may or may not be happening on the area in question that contains “non-producing” leases, and it is equally unclear as to whether or not any oil will be produced anytime soon from the approximately 4,700 holes currently drilled on those acres (see, the geniuses in the energy biz don't want anyone to know that because it could impact their shares of the market).

So basically, we have a mess in this country due to high energy prices that, apparently, no one could have anticipated (yeah…right), with fingers being pointed in the usual directions.

And all of this made me wonder about Little Ricky’s energy votes in the Senate during his happily-now-over time in office, so I found some information here. And what do you know...it turns out that Senator Blame-Liberals-For-The-Boston-Priest-Abuse-Scandal voted No on a bill to reduce our oil usage by 40 percent instead of 5 percent by 2025, voted Yes on terminating Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFÉ) standards for vehicles within 15 months, and voted Yes to defund renewable and solar energy (and of course, he voted Yes for the Bushco energy policy authored by Deadeye Dick Cheney). And he voted against funding ethanol development here (kind of a mixed blessing, though, I'll admit).

To be fair, though, I should note that Santorum voted Yes on targeting 100,000 hydrogen-powered vehicles by 2010 (guess he had an “off” day and actually did the right thing).

So the next time you hear Santorum yammering about energy, just remember that he was as much a part of the problem as anyone when we had a window of opportunity to avoid this current mess (would that we had been able to “drill,” if you will, for common sense instead).