Missing from coverage of Obama’s speech: reality energy

By Kay B. Day

[Image of Earth from NASA, US Government.]We gathered ‘round the TV to listen to President Barack Obama’s speech about the oil spill last night, and as usual, he delivered with panache. There is no more capable orator than our president. His speechwriter did well too, injecting terms as symbols of a warrior president, terms like ‘battle’ and ‘siege.’ But while I praise the delivery of the speech, I take issue with the substance. And pundits are missing a key element that is also missing—reality energy.

Obviously the president wants the damages from the Deepwater Horizon explosion remedied and reimbursed. But the president obviously also wants to push an energy bill and he wants to stymie deepwater drilling because of greater risk.

Via the moratorium, Obama has dealt the US another economic blow, courtesy of politics rather than principles of good governance.

In Obama’s perfect world, cars (for those who still have one) would run on electricity, homes would be powered by windmill and solar and those nasty carbon emissions from petroleum products would drastically decline.

On pushing an energy bill, our president has the Environmental Protection Agency behind him after that agency circumvented Congress and hoodwinked the Supreme Court on a ruling that essentially declares the EPA can regulate anything we exhale or emit. Bureaucrats once again shredded the US Constitution.

Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) are pushing a new energy bill that Lieberman said will cost us less than $1 a day.

I sincerely respect Lieberman but I don’t trust any government official’s cost projections right now. We can point to the US Post Office, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Medicare and  Medicaid and any number of other grossly underestimated in-the-red government efforts and say we were either lied to or great mistakes were made when the efforts were first cost out. I neither respect nor trust Kerry one iota.

Nor do I trust the so-called climate scientists who bandy hockey stick graphs and questionable IPCC data sometimes pulled from advocacy magazines. Walk backwards: the Little Ice Age, global warming, climate change and now the latest, biodiversity. A long line of politically motivated theories have cost the US taxpayer billions and billions of ineffective dollars.

The US government has poured billions of dollars into research and politically motivated experts are still trying to “prove” global warming. Those billions didn’t go into funding the next green energy wave, they went into academic coffers and Al-Gorian pockets. Numerous financiers like Gore stand ready to enjoy the temporary fruits of the Chicago Climate Exchange even as Spain stands ready to admit her error in buying into the ‘alternative energy will bring jobs’ myth.

Consumers in states like Florida area are already paying more for energy, aside from numerous fees benefiting government coffers.

The US government did not effectively act as watchdog over those who engaged in deepwater drilling under our last and current administrations, and Obama’s decision to place an attorney over the agency that is supposed to do so is another example of a president who looks for the nearest academic or law degree rather than the best hands-on expert for the job at hand. Our president turned to ideology rather than common sense and it’s likely our former president did the same.

Seizing the latest crisis, Democrats and a few errant Republicans will now push the reincarnation of Cap and Trade. Don’t fall for it. What the country needs is a mix of energy resources, using each resource to provide a means of running the wheels of our great nation. The energy bill is simply another government bubble and the day will come when, like Spain, we watch the bubble burst.

What we need at the moment is reality energy and I have no faith the Lieberman-Kerry bill will deliver it.

There is a straightforward challenge in the Gulf—to stop the leak, to capture as much oil as possible and to keep the runaway oil from contaminating shorelines and marshes. Both government and the corporate sector failed to act responsibly and speedily on these matters and that is what our president should have addressed Tuesday evening.

US Senate candidate Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) summed up the situation for his state: "

“Nonetheless, there is a justified sense of frustration among all Floridians regarding the government’s delayed response, especially in terms of overseeing the boom, mobilizing skimmers from around the world, utilizing tourism promotion money and promptly processing economic claims. Local governments still feel there is too much bureaucracy in the response coordination, too little communication, and that's why they are pushing back. Ultimately, there is a lack of leadership, while mistrust is the prevailing sentiment."

Obama does, however, deliver speeches with finesse. It’s the substance that failed to succeed in Tuesday's presidential address.