CALIFORNIA YANKEE

Florida Republican Party's $2.8-billion Obama Oil Gift

Lost is found.

The Republican Party of Florida delivered a $2.8 billion "check" to Obama’s Tallahassee headquarters:

"The check was from Senator Barack Obama and made out to oil companies as payment for his vote on the 2005 Energy Bill that provided nearly $3 billion in subsidies for oil and natural gas production," RPOF says.

“A local volunteer found the valuable check at a gas station near the Tallahassee airport yesterday," communications director Erin VanSickle deadpanned in a news release.

She added: “We can only assume that the document was mistakenly dropped by Senator Barack Obama’s campaign manager David Plouffe. He likely stopped at the gas station to check the tire pressure on his rental car prior to heading to last night’s campaign fundraiser in Tallahassee.”

The Obama, the Democrat's presumptuous nominee, forgets that it was Obama who voted for President Bush's energy bill, while McCain voted against it.

McCain called the Obama on this a week ago at a Town Hall in Lima, Ohio:

"I want to take a minute here on this issue because I think Senator Obama might be a little bit confused. Yesterday, he accused me of having President Bush's policies on energy. That's odd because he voted for the President's energy bill and I voted against it." -- John McCain

You can watch McCain reminding Obama about that vote in the following video:

John McCain:

"I spoke up against the Administration and Congress and Senator Obama when they gave us an energy bill with more giveaways to Big Oil and really no solution to our energy problems.

I want to take a minute here on this issue because I think Senator Obama might be a little bit confused. Yesterday, he accused me of having President Bush's policies on energy. That's odd because he voted for the President's energy bill and I voted against it. I voted against it had $2.8 billion in corporate welfare to Big Oil companies, and they're already making record profits, as you know. Senator Obama voted for that bill and its Big Oil giveaways. I know he hasn't been in the Senate that long, but even in the real world, voting for something means you support it and voting against something means you oppose it.

Anyway, my friends, just like on the energy bill, I've argued for reform and change in Washington for years and it hasn't made me friends. It hasn't made me friends in Washington. My friends, I was not elected Miss Congeniality again this year, but I don't answer to them. I answer to you. I answer to you. You will always know exactly where I stand and you will always know, no matter what, I will always do what I believe is right for our country. I will put my country first. If there's anything you take from this meeting, I will put my country first.

For his part, Senator Obama is an impressive orator. I applaud his talent and I applaud his success. All Americans should be proud of his accomplishments, but Washington is full of talented talkers, my friends, and unfortunately on issues big and small, what Senator Obama says and what he does are two different things. Senator Obama says he's going to change Washington, but his plan is to raise your taxes and spend more of your money. It's not my idea of a solution that troubles Washington. In fact, it sounds a lot like the problem.

Energy Freedom Day

U.S. Senator Jim DeMint (R-SC) and U.S. Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-Texas) announce the launch of a new Energy Freedom Daycampaign:

On October 1, America will celebrate Energy Freedom Day when the bans on offshore drilling and oil shale recovery will end. Right off our shores there are reserves estimated to hold over 18 billion barrels of oil and 55 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. And in America's West, oil shale is estimated to between 800 billion and 2 trillion barrels of oil — more than three times the proven oil reserves in Saudi Arabia.

Tapping these sources of American energy are desperately needed to lower gas prices AND reduce our dependence on foreign oil. But for over 20 years, Democrats have blocked access to this American energy.

And even now, at the height of an energy crisis that have sent gas prices sky-high, Democrats in Congress plan to extend the ban on American energy production.

Senator DeMint and Congressman Hensarling explain American Energy Freedom Day in the following video:

Visit EnergyFreedomDay.com for more information.

Do it all, do it now.

Debunking The Anti-Drilling Arguments

In an editorial entitled "Snake Oil," the Washington Post debunks the misleading talking points the left-wing liberal/progressives use to argue against drilling for more domestic energy resources:

· Drilling is pointless because the United States has only 3 percent of the world's oil reserves. This is a misleading because it refers only to known oil reserves. According to the Interior Department's Minerals Management Service (MMS), while there are an estimated 18 billion barrels of oil in the off-limits portions of the OCS, those estimates were made using old data from now-outdated seismic equipment. In the case of the Atlantic Ocean, the data were collected before Congress imposed a moratorium on offshore drilling in 1981. In 1987, the MMS estimated that there were 9 billion barrels of oil in the Gulf of Mexico. By 2006, after major advances in seismic technology and deepwater drilling techniques, the MMS resource estimate for that area had ballooned to 45 billion barrels. In short, there could be much more oil under the sea than previously known. The demand for energy is going up, not down. And for a long time, even as alternative sources of energy are developed, more oil will be needed.

· The oil companies aren't using the leases they already have. According to the MMS, there were 7,457 active leases as of June 8. Of those, only 1,877 were classified as "producing." As we pointed out in a previous editorial, the five leases that have made up the Shell Perdido project off Galveston since 1996 are not classified as producing. Only when it starts pumping the equivalent of an estimated 130,000 barrels of oil a day at the end of the decade will it be deemed "active." Since 1996, Shell has paid rent on the leases; filed and had approved numerous reports with the MMS, including an environmentally sensitive resource development plan and an oil spill recovery plan that is subject to unannounced practice runs by the MMS; drilled several wells to explore the area at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars; and started constructing the necessary infrastructure to bring the oil to market. The notion that oil companies are just sitting on oil leases is a myth. With oil prices still above $100 a barrel, that charge never made sense.

· Drilling is environmentally dangerous. Opposition to offshore drilling goes back to 1969, when 80,000 barrels of oil from an offshore oil well blowout washed up on the beaches of Santa Barbara. In 1971, the Interior Department instituted a host of reporting requirements (such as the resource development and oil spill recovery plans mentioned above) and stringent safety measures. Chief among them is a requirement for each well to have an automatic shut-off valve beneath the ocean floor that can also be operated manually. According to the MMS, between 1993 and 2007, there were 651 spills of all sizes at OCS facilities (in federal waters three miles or more offshore) that released 47,800 barrels of oil. With 7.5 billion barrels of oil produced in that time, that equates to 1 barrel of oil spilled per 156,900 barrels produced. That's not to minimize the danger. But no form of energy is perfect or without trade-offs. Besides, if it is acceptable to drill in the Caspian Sea and in developing countries such as Nigeria where environmental concerns are equally important, it's hard to explain why the United States should rule out drilling off its own coasts.

Contrast the Republican call to do it all now, with the Democrats' obstruction to seeking additional energy reserves.

Act Now On A Balanced Energy Plan

Nevada Democrat, and Senate majority leader Harry Reid is doing his best to avoid meaningful votes on proposals to curb energy prices.

In the following video, 15 Republican Senators ask Reid to act now on high gas prices. The message? While Reid avoids the issue, Senate Republicans know Americans are hurting and are asking Democrats to join them so the Senate can act now. The Republican Senators propose a balanced approach that includes finding more energy sources while using less. Do it all. Do it now.

Contrast the Republican call to do it all now, with Reid's stalling tactics and hope that the Republicans will "cool down" during the Senate's month-long August recess.

Media Focuses On Obama's Shifts On Energy

Obama can't be happy about the coverage of his energy flip flops straddles waffles reversals.

Associated Press:

Obama's proposal, though, includes two significant reversals of positions he has taken in the past: He had steadfastly fought the idea of limited new offshore drilling and was against tapping the nation's emergency oil stockpile to relieve pump prices that have stubbornly hovered around $4 a gallon.

McClatchy Newspapers:

Obama's revised position on a key energy issue was his second shift in three days. On Friday, he dropped his opposition to offshore oil drilling, saying that he could back limited drilling if it were part of a comprehensive energy package.

New York Post:

One more week, one more Barack Obama reversal on a key issue.

Actually, make that two reversals.

The Democratic presidential hopeful says he's now open to easing the offshore-drilling ban, and he wants to tap the nation's Strategic Petroleum Reserve.

What a difference a few polls make, no?

Until recently, Obama was adamantly against offshore drilling and tapping the SPR.

Why the shift? Because voters are longing for relief from $4 gas and he thinks his new views will win them over.

So much for principles.

New York Times:

While focusing on alternative energy production, Mr. Obama has veered in recent days toward increasing access to fossil fuels, both in seeking to tap the strategic oil reserve and in softening his opposition to offshore oil drilling.

San Francisco Chronicle:

Sen. Barack Obama's energy policy is offering more flip flops than a Lake Tahoe souvenir stand.

First the presumptive Democratic nominee opposes offshore oil drilling, but, wait, now he doesn't. Second, he never suggested dipping into national petroleum reserves, and now he wants to open the spigot.

And remember how he hooted at suspending federal gas taxes as a primary-season stunt? Now, he wants $1,000 rebate checks mailed out to families, paid by a windfall profits tax on the oil industry that was tried and dumped in the 1980s.

The crushing power of $4-a-gallon gas lies behind these changes along with polls showing his modest lead is dwindling. Other polls, showing a slim majority of the country now favors coastal drilling, have made it easier to switch positions with little pain.

But the ideas that Obama is now embracing come loaded with flaws and offer the driving public only momentary relief at best.

USA Today:

Obama's proposal includes two reversals of positions he has taken in the past: He had fought the idea of limited new offshore drilling and was against tapping the nation's emergency oil stockpile to relieve gasoline prices that have stubbornly hovered around $4 a gallon.

Wall Street Journal:

During the Democratic primary, Sen. Obama argued against releasing oil from the strategic reserves, in contrast with then-rival Sen. Hillary Clinton's support for such a move. He has reiterated that position during the general election campaign against Republican Sen. John McCain.

[. . .]

Senior Obama adviser Robert Gibbs said the new proposal does not represent a reversal, but a recognition that "we are in an energy crisis" and that this is one of many things that need to be done. Sen. Obama had previously said that the reserves should be tapped only in an emergency.

[. . .]

On Saturday, Sen. Obama backed off his opposition to offshore drilling, saying he would support expanded drilling as part of a broader bipartisan energy package to reduce dependence on foreign oil.

Washington Post:

"Obama called Monday for using oil from the nation's strategic reserves to lower gasoline prices, the second time in less than a week that he has modified a position on energy issues."

McCain's grownup energy policy is forcing Obama to become more nuanced than John Kerry. According to Newsweek, McCain's energy plan has left the Obama camp sputtering: McCain's flurry of concrete proposals—including a call for 45 more nuclear power plants, a $300 million prize to the designer of a new electric car battery, overturning the 27-year ban on offshore drilling and a $5,000 tax credit for people who buy "zero-emissions" cars put Obama on the defensive.

You can watch the following video which covers the latest reversals in Obama's energy plan:

Obama 'stooped to dishonesty' with new ad

Now that he is losing the energy issue to Senator McCain, Obama launched a negative and misleading ad attacking McCain.

FactCheck calls Obama's "Pocket" ad misleading:

In a new ad, Obama says, "I don’t take money from oil companies."

Technically, that's true, since a law that has been on the books for more than a century prohibits corporations from giving money directly to any federal candidate. But that doesn’t distinguish Obama from his rivals in the race.

We find the statement misleading:

Obama has accepted more than $213,000 from individuals who work for companies in the oil and gas industry and their spouses.

Two of Obama's bundlers are top executives at oil companies and are listed on his Web site as raising between $50,000 and $100,000 for the presidential hopeful.

This morning on CNN, former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney said he was disappointed that the Democrats' presumptuous nominee decided to approve the ad:

"That's really sad," Romney said. "I didn't know that Obama had stooped to dishonesty."

You can watch Romney's take in the following video:

Democrats Playing Politics With America's Energy Future

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her Democrats have managed to block a vote on offshore drilling. The Democrats refuse to allow a vote on drilling because they know it will pass.

A solid majority, 69%, of Americans want more drilling for more American-made energy. Even a majority of Californians now favor offshore drilling.

Some Democrats fear the party's stance could hurt them in the fall elections:

Some Democrats have already started to shift their views. Rep. Tim Holden, D-Pa., who voted two years ago against drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and for a federal ban on offshore drilling, told a hometown paper last weekend he now wants to "drill everywhere."

The following video sums it all up:

Jay Leno On Oil Drilling In ANWR

Jay Leno takes the Democrats to task for blocking oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR):

Can someone please explain any rational basis for the Democrats' continued obstruction of drilling in ANWR?

There are an estimated 10 billion barrels of domestic oil waiting to be harvested in ANWR. ANWR comprises 19 million acres in Northeast Alaska, 17.5 million of which are totally off-limits to drilling or any other kind of economic activity.

In 1980 a Democrat controlled Congress, at the behest of President Jimmy Carter, set area 1002 aside for possible energy exploration. Since then, although there are active oil and gas wells in at least 36 U.S. wildlife refuges, we have been prevented from using this domestic source of oil.

The most recent attempt to authorize drilling in ANWR -- successfully filibustered by Senate Democrats in 2005 -- limited the surface disturbance to 2,000 acres, a very small portion of a very big coastal plain in a very big wildlife refuge in the biggest state in the Union.

The vast majority of ANWR will be completely unaffected by drilling. It would occur only on a small part of the coastal plain where there already is some human habitation. Alaska has 141 million acres of protected lands, an area equal to the size of California and New York combined.

The statute creating ANWR contemplated future oil production on the coastal plain, subject to congressional approval. It is worth noting that another wildlife refuge in Alaska, the Kenai National Wildlife Refuge, has had drilling onsite for decades. The oil production there rarely makes the news because it has not caused any problems, even though Kenai has far more wildlife than ANWR.

In addition to Kenai, Prudhoe Bay, only 55 miles west of ANWR, has produced more than 10 billion barrels of oil since the 1970s. Decades of studies show this oil production has affected the environment negligibly. Environmental opponents of drilling cannot cite a single species driven toward extinction or even a decline in numbers attributable to Prudhoe Bay. That drilling also was done with decades-old technology and methods far less environmentally sensitive than ANWR would require.

Flowing at one million barrels a day -- equal to 20 percent of today's domestic oil production -- ANWR oil would almost equal America's daily imports from Saudi Arabia.

I just don't get it.

McCain Proposes Oil Independence By 2025

This week Senator McCain proposed a plan to free America from foreign oil suppliers by 2025. Its a plan Newsweek calls a "grown-up" energy plan.

McCain's plan for energy independence is called The Lexington Project --"named for the town where Americans asserted their independence once before." You can read the plan here.

The Lexington Project has left the Obama-ites sputtering. Some pundits thought Obama had the advantage so far in offering an energy "vision." But Newsweek is much more impressed with McCain's Lexington Project:

Frankly, however, no one really cares what Obama said last October. And there's no question that McCain's flurry of concrete proposals—including a call for 45 more nuclear power plants, a $300 million prize to the designer of a new electric car battery, overturning the 27-year ban on offshore drilling and a $5,000 tax credit for people who buy "zero-emissions" cars—prompted Obama to spend most of his own energy speech this week knocking those ideas down. That in turn generated a GOP Web video declaring that "Obama is Dr. No," complete with a Bond-like theme song.

In fairness, I note that FactCheck.org finds that the Dr. No video distorts Obama's positions on clean-energy innovation and nuclear power.

McCain: Government Must Lead Path To Green Energy

McCain wants the federal government to start buying flex-fuel and hybrid vehicles and leasing and building energy-efficient office space:

The Republican presidential nominee said Tuesday the federal government has 3.3 billion square feet of office space nationwide and buys 60,000 automobiles a year, and if elected in November he would encourage "green technologies."

Watch the following Associated Press video report: