Without Obama, We Would be a Global Energy Superpower

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Saudi Arabia has long been the dominant producer of petroleum on the planet. Nature endowed the Arabian Peninsula with gigantic deposits of this vital source of energy. Many of us have lamented the quirk of nature that placed much-needed oil in the most geopolitically unstable region in the world.

Although Saudi Arabia is the king of oil producers at present, there is another country that has far more extensive deposits of fossil fuels. Because fossil fuels are the most economical and reliable energy sources known to man, the country that has the largest share of them is fortunate indeed. What is this richly endowed country? It is none other than the United States of America.

Perhaps you have heard the United States described as “the Saudi Arabia of coal.” Actually, that may be an understatement, for while the U.S. Department of Energy estimates that the Saudis have 20 percent of the world’s known petroleum reserves, the United States has an even larger share—27 percent—of the world’s known deposits of coal. As engineers continue to develop more and more “clean coal” technologies, this abundant resource will continue to serve our energy needs for as long as we need it.

In addition to our immense coal deposits, the United States contains gigantic natural gas deposits. Currently, the United States ranks fourth in natural gas production, but domestic reserves are soaring as horizontal drilling and “fracking” tap the mind-boggling dimensions of the natural gas fields located here in Pennsylvania (the Marcellus formation), Louisiana (the Haynesville formations), and elsewhere across the lower 48. If fracking can be done without contaminating precious water supplies, it is possible that the United States may also become “the Saudi Arabia of natural gas.”

There is even more good news: Besides being the Saudi Arabia of coal and potentially natural gas, we may become the next “Saudi Arabia” of oil. This won’t be the light, sweet crude that the Saudis pump at little cost and with relative ease, but it’s oil nonetheless. The Green River shale rock formation under just three of our states—Colorado, Wyoming, and Utah—is estimated to hold 1.8 trillion barrels of oil, about seven times as large as the Saudis’ crude oil reserves.

Read More at Floyd Reports by Dr. Mark W. Hendrickson, Floyd Reports

Congress probes land deal in Alaska’s Tongass forest

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For decades, conservationists, the U.S. Forest Service, tribes, Native corporations and the people who live in the Tongass National Forest have warred over how to manage the vast temperate rain forest that covers most of southeast Alaska.

The fight resurfaces in Washington this week, as the Native corporation Sealaska makes a case to a Senate committee that it should be able to pick new acreage outside of the original land grants it never took ownership of.

The company’s choices are controversial, in part because they include valuable old-growth timber that many would like to see off limits to logging. Some local groups also have concerns about how Sealaska plans to address important cultural locations in the acres it wants, including places that are part of their ancestral history.

The 17 million-acre Tongass is the nation’s largest national forest. Because development came relatively late to southeast Alaska, parts of the forest are little different from how they were centuries ago. The forest, with 11,000 miles of shoreline, is home to bears, salmon and the largest known concentration of bald eagles.

Sealaska argues that it’s sought for decades to assume ownership of all the acreage it was granted under 1971’s Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act, the landmark legislation that settled aboriginal land claims by the state’s Native people.

Read More at The Miami Herald by Erika Bolstad, McClatchy Newspapers

 

 

Senate debates president’s power during cyber-attack

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Senators squared off with Obama administration officials Monday about plans to give the president emergency powers to protect vital U.S. electronic networks from attacks by hackers, cyberterrorists and foreign governments.

The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee held a hearing on the administration’s legislative proposal, announced two weeks ago, that would rely on a pre-World War II radio emergency law to provide the president with authority to protect key computer and communication networks — like those mainly in private hands that run power grids, phone systems and banking services — from a cyber-attack.

“I must say this baffles me,” said Sen. Susan Collins, Maine Republican, of the administration’s plan to rely on the 1934 statute.

Read More at the Washington Times By Shaun Waterman, The Washington Times

Supreme Court’s Scary Power Grab

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The U.S. Supreme Court effectively ordered California on Monday to release 33,000 inmates over two years from an in-state prison population that numbers about 143,000.

Kent Scheidegger of the tough-on-crime Criminal Justice Legal Foundation blogged that Californians shouldn’t “bother investing much in a car. It will be open season on cars, given that car thieves (nonviolent offenders) will never go to prison no matter how many times they are caught.”

The 5-4 Plata decision upheld a federal three-judge panel that in 2009 found that overcrowding in California prisons is “criminogenic” — likely to produce criminals — and ordered state prisons to run at 137.5 percent of design capacity. The state’s prisons are designed to hold 80,000 inmates. (Be it noted, 100 percent capacity means one inmate per cell.)

Read More at Real Clear Politics By Debra Saunders, Real Clear Politics

Don’t Let Liberal Establishment Choose Our Candidates

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Conservatives are worried that an ideal Reagan conservative has yet to emerge and lead the 2012 GOP presidential field. But are we allowing the liberal media (and establishment Republicans) to manipulate the narrative to prevent such a result?

Obviously, the liberal media do not have the best interests of Reagan conservatives in mind when they do their “reporting.” So when they tell us certain GOP candidates are unelectable or electable, common sense would counsel us to take their advice with mounds of salt. But do we?

Surely Ronald Reagan isn’t the only qualified, electable Reagan conservative in our lifetimes. Nonetheless, the virtually unchallenged assumption is that Reagan conservatism is extreme and its purveyors intrinsically divisive.

Read More at Human Events By David Limbaugh, Human Events

Why the Right Fails Online — Lessons From History for the GOP

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If you think the Internet revolution encompasses only areas like business, advertising, publishing and entertainment, you are sorely mistaken.

In less than a decade, starting from nearly nothing, left-wing powerhouse MoveOn.org created a force that can put a million volunteers on the ground, can raise $30 million in small donor contributions every cycle (several times that number in 2008 and likely 2012), and never needs help from big check writers. The group’s small donors kept Barack Obama even or ahead of Hillary Clinton in fundraising throughout 2007, even while he was 20 points down in the polls, and their activists won him the caucus states by an average of 70-30, ultimately delivering the Democratic nomination.

There is nothing like that kind of online political powerhouse on the right. Nothing.

Read More at Fox News By Rod D. Martin, FoxNews

Video:Obama Paddles His Enemies

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Patton: Can We Trade Barack For Bibi?

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Let’s just get it out in the open right now. I would like to trade Barack Obama for Benjamin Netanyahu. I know, I know, Netanyahu was not born in the United States, but then…well, let’s don’t open that can of worms again. The bottom line is that the Israeli prime minister is one of the premier leaders in the world today, while Obama is one of the premier aspiring dictators. Ask yourself; wouldn’t you honestly prefer an Israeli conservative to a Muslim sympathizer?

In the 63 years since the creation of modern Israel, every American president has met the responsibilities expected of a friend and an ally — until now. From Harry Truman to George W. Bush, the tiny Jewish state could count on the United States of America to honor its commitments. Not any more. Barack Obama has thrown Israel under the international bus and is making no apologies for it.

In his recent speech on the subject of Israeli-Palestinian “peace,” Obama informed the world that he expected Israel to go back to its pre-1967 borders. Who does this arrogant man think that he is? Can you imagine Mexico telling Texans they should go back to their pre-1836 borders? (Actually, there are a lot of Mexicans who believe that is exactly what should happen, but that is a topic for another day.)

Read More at GOPUSA by Doug Patton, GOPUSA

Did Obama quote Alinsky in Mideast policy address?

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In his major address on the Middle East last week, did President Obama quote from the centerpiece of radical community organizer Saul Alinsky’s defining work?

While hailing the Arab uprisings sweeping the Middle East and North Africa, Obama laid out his foreign policy using terminology strikingly similar to Alinsky’s mantra.

“There must be no doubt that the United States of America welcomes change that advances self-determination and opportunity,” Obama stated. “Yes, there will be perils that accompany this moment of promise. But after decades of accepting the world as it is in the region, we have a chance to pursue the world as it should be.”

Read More at WND by Aaron Klein, WorldNetDaily