Oily In The Mourning

Why bother with reality, when you figure a lie will get you further politically? Not that there's evidence that the base to whom the lies are directed will ever ever ever demand truth.

Newt Gingrich, who, like every last one of the R candidates and congressional leaders, never met a lie he wouldn't tell, has a new one: President Obama's energy policy is anti-American. (No longer merely un-American: ANTI-American!) Too much emphasis on alternative energy, electric cars, not enough on oil, don'tcha know. So here's a little article out of Houston, where you'd have to assume they know a thing or three about oil:

The United States' rapidly declining crude oil supply has made a stunning about-face, shredding federal oil projections and putting energy independence in sight of some analyst forecasts.

After declining to levels not seen since the 1940s, U.S. crude production began rising again in 2009. Drilling rigs have rushed into the nation's oil fields, suggesting a surge in domestic crude is on the horizon.

The number of rigs in U.S. oil fields has more than quad­rupled in the past three years to 1,272, according to the Baker Hughes rig count. Including those in natural gas fields, the United States now has more rigs at work than the entire rest of the world.

Let's see... "more than quadrupled in the last three years..." "began rising again 2009..." What happened back then? Lemme think...

(Hot off the presses, here's yet another datum. Anyone think it'll make a difference in what teabaggRs believe about their president?)

In a dazzling show of virtuosity, Newt managed to roll several inaccuracies and lies into just a sentence or two, stacking them up like leftover wives. Waving his ignorance like a Jolly Roger, after getting Obama's policy on drilling entirely wrong, as we've seen, he said he'd bring the price of oil down by drilling even more. Pounding his cluelessness still harder, like a precordial thump, he produced the pandering (if condescending) laugh-line that you can't put a gun rack in a Chevy Volt. Wrong, wrong, and wrong.

It's now safe to say this pseudo-intellectual idiot will not be the R nominee. But he's still in there, collecting love and money based on this sort of crap. Speaks worse of the bankrollers than it does of him...

Taking newspeak to another level still, Rick Santorum claims it's liberals who are anti-science. Got that? The guy who disbelieves evolution, climate change, and the age of the earth, the guy who wants to end public education so parents can teach their kids to think like Rick does, decides to go full Orwell on us all. Seriously. There used to be a time when people who read "1984" saw it as political satire, as an overly dark view of the future. Now there's an entire field of presidential hopefuls for whom the book is on the same shelf as their Bibles. Maybe a higher one. To them, it's a textbook; and for their followers, most of whom won't have read it, whether they recognize it or not it's a roadmap.

Not long ago a reader asked me to suggest which R candidate I'd recommend she vote for, since there's no way in hell she'd vote for a thoughtful middle-of-the-road, oil-drilling, education-supporting, war-ending person like Barack Hussein Obama. I actually took the time to leave her a very lengthy reply, to which she's not responded. Too much food for thought, I guess.

But what does it matter? It's like asking for a recommendation about the temperature at which you'd choose to burn to death: 1000 degrees, 1,500 degrees, or 2000. Pick an extremity, and choose which man and where you want him to put it: the chameleon with his finger in the wind, the religious nut with his thumb in his ass, or the self-important deluded egomaniac with his head up his ass. Every one of these guys is a blatant and unrepentant liar, a deliberate deceiver, who assumes the people to whom they address their bullshit either won't notice or won't care.

Based on any evidence at all, who can say they're wrong?