Energetic on energy

This is absolutely the correct thing to do:

Nancy Pelosi, energy traitor

Democrats one and all are, in EVERY arena they engage, doing whatever they can to destroy America.

American energy for grownups

 We need more refineries.

America as an energy exporter

So this is happening, and good thing it is.

We can't wait says Obama. But you know we will.

I don't know if the White House has figured out that we've figured out the cynical process of a late Friday news dump so that unappetizing news items get the weekend to cool down and hopefully will be forgotten before Monday.  But either they've caught on and started dumping stupid news items in other time slots, or else they've been doing that all along and we haven't caught on that every single thing out of this white House is bad.

How to make America fail

This has shown up all over the right blogosphere but I'm still going to pile on because it needs to be shared, often.

Election Countdown Timer

The 4th quarter has started - it's the last year of the first of two possible terms for President Obama.  I've added a countdown timer on my blog in the upper right.  I might keep it there for the entire countdown, or I might remove it.  The year will go fast and time is one of the important factors in the election cycle for conservatives.  The other top factors are (i) quality of the candidate (ii) money and (iii) the successful dissemination of the message.

I talked about these things extensively after McCain lost to Obama.

Here's some links to some of those important posts.

The agenda.  The roadmap. The energy needed. The unforced errors. And combating Alinsky (continued here).

Obama risks American energy security (again)

With the world's third largest proven oil reserves, Canada is already the United States' largest supplier of oil.  Oil in Canada is safe, accessible by private enterprise, unlike most oil around the world, and Canada is more than friendly with the United States.  Ramping up oil production dramatically over the next 15 years, Canada is doing what the Obama administration is refusing to do, and is on it's way to becoming an energy superpower.  But along with that extra supply, new demand is needed, and Canada is increasingly looking east for another buyer, as the Obama administration drags its feet on purchasing more oil from its neighbor, instead looking to Brazil, and in the process risking increased reliance on an unstable Middle East.

Obama's energy jobs destroyed number

Obama: Frigging with Rigging

According to the Department of Energy, U.S. offshore oil production is going to drop by 11% in 2011.  The reason is the Obama administration's ban on deep water drilling that came about, conveniently, as a result of the Gulf Oil Spill.  What the President wants is green energy self-sufficiency - in other words energy self-sufficiency on his terms.  Setting aside the  President's hypocrisy on energy self sufficiency in the United States, there's the issue of the President once again, putting an agenda ahead of the needs of the American people.  In a time of economic trouble, shouldn't the President be doing as much as he can to mitigate the economic circumstances faced by the nation?

The Clues Are There - Forget The Economy

That might sound obtuse with the economy still in the tank but it actually makes a lot of sense for Republicans. Why? Because there is something simpler and much more profound that are at the top of voters minds right now and will continue to be through the remainder of 2010. What could possibly be more urgent than the economy?

The GOP is getting some things right

The GOP is getting some things right on health care, this succinct video is tough to dispute.

And on Obama versus Obama on the stimulus;

But being the party of NO, is only part of the solution. The GOP needs to come up with it's own alternative plans. The good news is, it has. Here's an example;




The Bad News?

Nice videos. Too bad only 200,000 views or so for those 3 videos combined.

The bad news is that while putting these videos on youtube, the GOP is merely trying to expand their listening audience. The problem is that in reaching out to the American audience they are nowhere near aggressive or proactive enough. There needs to be a big push from the GOP that matches the Tea Parties and Town halls of the grassroots conservatives in middle America. "Good videos - shame about the web hits" won't cut it. Where's the GOP town halls and community speaking engagements? Where's the church functions? Where's the community outreach on these points?

News flash: If you don't reach out to untapped constituencies they'll never learn your position and they will continue to vote while uninformed or misinformed. The Obama administration and the mainstream media are counting on that.

Michael Steele, the GOP chair, needs to get the GOP in uninterested voters' faces, in a kinder, gentler way than say the Obama SEIU thugs would approach it. There's still time, but so far it seems to be lacking as part of the overall plan.

Obama = Carter

Is Obama recycling the old Carter playbook? On some issues, such as energy it sure seems to be the case.

Most striking, in this quick comparison on the issue of energy policy is the fact that for 4 minutes, Carter didn't say much except that we've got a problem and he wants to fix it. Obama was able to do the same thing in in a 31 second commercial. They've gotten more efficient at pointing out a problem, and offering a straw man solution.

Claims are great when you don't have to back them up with facts or even offer details as to what your solution might possibly be.

Carter:




And Obama;



If you're old enough to remember Carter's admonishment to wear sweaters and turn down the thermostat, you might have the insight already to realize that Obama's urging people to inflate their tires equates to pretty much the same tripe.

The real question is whether President Obama is deliberately taking a mid-East crisis in Iran's nuclear program and trying to leverage it to destabilize the oil supply, and oil prices to further his green agenda, during a time of economic pain. He's a smart guy, he's got an agenda. The thought easily could have crossed his mind. I'm just throwing out ideas here, but it seems to me, these foreign policy gaffes, could either be a sign of incompetence or a sign of mad genius being used for a sinister purpose.

More cards in the Democrats' house

Democrats have built themselves a house of cards. Not the Obama administration - 50 years of cobbling together a disparate group of specials interests has done so. But a house of cards, which can grow quite large is inherently weak, and easy to topple. Previously, Nonsensible looked briefly at the impact of immigration policy versus minimum wage policy, and it was in a word - non-sensible.

There are many more topple points. One interesting incongruity is the environmentalism embedded in the party. On the surface, it's very easy to be anti-pollution. Who wants pollution? It's another example of liberal arguments being emotional rather than intellectual. It's easy to say that we should keep the world clean. But when you get into specifics of how you want to go about doing that, you then realize the card in the house of cards runs contrary to some of the other cards it leans against. In the most obvious case, is another liberal card - unions. One of the main culprits of the economic degradation is humanity and its use of the automobile. The UAW needs an auto industry to create cars so it can create jobs.

But the automobile is anathema to environmentalism. The Democrats have to please a constituency that is against an industry that employees supporters to whom the Democrats are also beholden.

They couch this in the the intangible in that they will create millions of new 'green' jobs thereby placating both interests. But where the rubber meets the road, how do these new green cars magically appear? There's no plan for that. There's no reasonable time frame that transitions the production to electrical engines and manages to maintain jobs. Just mandates for tougher environmental standards that get imposed on auto makers and risk worsening margins and forcing layoffs. And there's the fabled millions of green jobs that will, pardon the pun, take root immediately apparently. It's a house of cards.

To further complicate matters they oppose offshore drilling. ANWR drilling. Any drilling. They probably oppose dental drilling. They then argue that $700 billion in transfers to oil producers is a bad thing for America. It is. But why does it exist? Because of overly cautious environmental protectionism has crippled domestic energy production. It's resulted in a loss of jobs, a loss of revenue and a transfer of funds to questionable nations, in addition to doing nothing to prevent the increase in the domestic or worldwide purchasing of automobiles.

A - preventing domestic power production (drilling) + B - a green plan without any planning or basis in reality = C - job losses for the United Auto Workers.

It's a house of cards. More cards, will follow.

The 'Vision thing'.

In a post yesterday, Matt Lewis talked about what idea conservatives need to focus on, with an eye towards a providing new Contract with America. I thought I'd add my two cents worth here.

One quick note - whatever the vision is, I think the time has come to not only articulate a vision, but provide voters with a clear road map instead of platitudes and vague ideas. In 4 years, people will likely be asking "How did Obama plan to get us there? He never really told us." If you can't contrast against that, the ideas might sound like hollow promises.

1. Matt mentions science and math. How is it possible to disagree with that? Obama mentioned on the campaign trail music.

Really? Really? What tripe! You want to teach students to fiddle while America burns, Mr. President-elect?

The impacts of being the party of math and science however are far reaching. It impacts education policy. And that in turn may provide an opportunity for in-roads in ethnic communities. Asian communities for example are likely to appreciate the attention on these ares as they keenly understand their importance. No racial comments please, I'm generalizing of course.

But another area of impact is translating the emphasis on these into a realizable economic benefit. For example, patent protection, while not sexy is important. The Chinese violate copyright laws systematically. There needs to be a more robust effort to protect the innovation that results from the focus on the hard sciences. Likely this will affect trade policy.

2. Free trade. Republicans often blindly follow the doctrine of free trade. It's good in theory, but in an imperfect world, it needs to be a finely managed march towards free trade. China does not deserve it's preferred partner status. Why support a blind allegiance to an idea, when practically applied it's taking American jobs. We need to explain the benefits, manage the transition and ensure that equal access, equal playing field free trade is followed.

Free trade has proven very effective. But it has not come without certain pitfalls that need to be addressed and managed.

3. Industry. The Republican party has a huge untapped opportunity to get unions to come onside. Not by pandering to their immediate priorities, but rather by embracing re-industrialization. More factories mean more jobs. More jobs mean more votes, period. Regardless of whether union leadership buys in, union members understand that supporting industry is supporting job opportunities.

We don't want to impede business from taking advantage of cheaper labour, but as we have seen, that often comes at a cost of quality. American workers can produce quality given the opportunity. And I'm sure there are ways to produce quantity cheaply too. Leverage that science agenda, improve the means of production through automation and create volumes that can't be matched in a sweatshop of 5,000 offshore workers.

Promote tax policy that encourages tax breaks for on shoring, and/or heavily favours R&D.

The economy is shifting to a service based economy. Good. But without a sustainable base of production, the country is doomed. You can't offshore all of your production indefinitely. If there's a net capital outflow, it's not sustainable indefinitely. And while services can be exported, clearly it can't be done at the same rate as the importation of goods. Not at this point in time anyway.

There's also a national security risk of becoming a service-dominated economy. What if our clothing and automobile suppliers decided to cut us off? With insufficient means of domestic production it would come as a shock to the system.

So being the party of productivity and re-industrialization has it's logical and populist appeal. As the economy shifts, make sure that domestic production specializes sustainable industries. Do not cede production of the automobile, electronics, defense, communication, transportation, medicine or even resources to foreign interests. Specialize and be the best.

4. Hispanics. Matt is right about the Hispanic community. The numbers don't lie. Not only is this group key as a segment of the population, look at the electoral college potential. If Republicans can keep the south and Florida onside and make inroads in the southwest, particularly California, the potential impact is clear.

I have argued elsewhere that outreach is heavily underplayed by Republicans. It's a missed opportunity. Hispanics have a natural fit with Republican ideology. But we don't sell them on that. Amnesty for illegals may be an issue, but it is not an issue if the broader picture is properly framed. Hispanic (or any) families have the same basic needs from government. Schools, hospitals, crime control, job security and freedom to be who they are. These are basic human needs. If you emphasize the importance of family to a Hispanic voter, do you think he's going to argue with you about it? Probably not.

This is simply a variation of the "all politics is local" argument. Local, in a different context - ethnic/cultural. The Republican party missed an opportunity recently to address the NAACP. Why? Outreach is the key.

Go to community events. Go to churches. Go to their associations. And talk to them. Ask questions and listen to the answers. Invite them to participate in Republican events. Inclusively. Sponsor their events. This is Basic 101 stuff.

This dovetails very well with being the party of family, security and freedom.

On that last point, an aside. Why is it that people would want to give the same group that managed to create the current financial crisis the keys t their 401k's? Could anyone manage it better on their own. Even by throwing darts at an investment dartboard seems like it would have yielded better results.

Fiscal Responsibility. Let's take another crack at this one. Balanced budgets. Innovative solutions to the unfunded liabilities of Social Security and Medicare. I'm sure there are myriad ways out of the mess. Let's table some and pick the best ideas.

While on the subject of finance, what about becoming the party of banking? Every great empire has had its financial vehicles to leverage. Controlling international money flows is key to a prosperous empire/nation. Smarter banking. Stronger banks. Perhaps the Fed could benchmark it's prime rates based on criteria of banking stability. Just a random thought. Anything to bolster the foundation of stronger banking institutions is good.

Energy. Yes, energy independence is an imperative. Drilling wherever possible, clean coal, natural gas, and nuclear power should be at the forefront. Yes, hydrogen fuel cells, biofuels and other alternative sources should be investigated. But they may take 10, 20, 50 or 100 years to come to fruition. The country doesn't have that time to spare.

Those areas I think are good starting point.