The Hill Street Blahg

For many of us, today marks the beginning of the July 4th holiday. This is because the 4th lands on a Friday this year which means summer vacationers like myself, will head out on our nations highways today or tomorrow. First and foremost on my mind this year as I prepare for my 6 hour road trip is the cost of the gasoline to reach my destination. I drive a sub-compact SUV which holds 15.2 gallons of fuel, which a full tank will give me approximately 335 miles in return. With fuel prices at $4.00 per gallon, that equates to $61.00. If you stop and think about it, that isn’t too bad of a price to pay for the distance realized as opposed to the cost of air fare, bus tickets, or rail. But never mind the pleasantries and niceties. $4.00 per gallon gasoline borders on the insane and it fries my rear end each and every time I fuel up because I know it need not be this way.

I know deep in my heart of hearts, there is no logical reason for these high gas prices other than the shortage of the precious fuel. Never mind what the hard headed, all knowing Bill O’Reilly tells you or the less than truthful politicians tell you. There just isn’t enough gasoline to meet the demand. Sorry Mr. Bill, it’s the supply and demand factor, not the O’Reilly factor and for once in your life, you’re not getting it. And to add fuel to the fire, no pun intended, every time I hear Barack Obama or any of his fellow Democrat travelers say “we can’t drill ourselves out of this crisis” I want to scream. Does this foolish statement mean that finding more oil is not going to increase the supply? This is like saying more water won’t quench your thirst or ease a drought, or more food won’t ease the hunger or increase the world food supply, or more ice won’t keep my vacation beer cold. How ignorant do these people think we are?

The long and the short of it this. We need to drill for more oil in this country and we need to do it now. Offshore, on shore, Anwar, or any other place there are known oil reserves. The Democrats and whacko environmentalist won’t be happy until we’re heading off on vacation by horse and buggy and cooking our favorite vacation treat of Smith’s hot dogs over an open fire started by striking a piece of flint against a rock.

As long as our Democrat friends in Congress have a travel allowance paid for by the taxpayer, they will never see the urgency of the high prices we pay and the obvious reason for the shortage. You can bet your first born child if they had to pay for gasoline out of their own greedy pockets, we would be hearing more than foolish and meaningless slogans out of there political posturing mouths.

Here’s an interesting and factual video the Tennessee Republican Party has recently released regarding Barack Obama’s “no energy” policy. Who say’s a picture, in this case a video, isn’t worth a thousand words? Americans had better be careful what they wish for because they just might get it.

Video courtesy of An Ol Broads Ramblings.

The SCOTUS has upheld the right for individuals to own and bear firearms. I must admit I’ve been somewhat apprehensive regarding this up and coming decision due to their recent flawed judicial rulings. This decision further illustrates the importance of the up and coming Presidential election and the importance of SCOTUS justice appointments. No doubt the ruling would have gone in favor of those who want to take our constitutional rights of owning a firearm away from us if  Barack Obama had an appointee on the bench.

What is really horrifying is the fact that 4 of these appointed justices were in dissent an voted to take away our basic freedom. This should have been a unanimous decision but these liberal justice are hell bent on rewriting our Constitution as they see fit. These are dangerous times we live in and the biggest threat we have to our country are the liberals who have hijacked the once great Democrat Party.

Writing for the majority, here’s what Justice Scalia had to say about today’s ruling.

…that an individual right to bear arms is supported by “the historical narrative” both before and after the Second Amendment was adopted. The Constitution does not permit “the absolute prohibition of handguns held and used for self-defense in the home,” Scalia said. The court also struck down Washington’s requirement that firearms be equipped with trigger locks or kept disassembled, but left intact the licensing of guns. Scalia noted that the handgun is Americans’ preferred weapon of self-defense in part because “it can be pointed at a burglar with one hand while the other hand dials the police.”

Here’s what two of the dissenting justices had to say.

Justice John Paul Stevens wrote that the majority “would have us believe that over 200 years ago, the Framers made a choice to limit the tools available to elected officials wishing to regulate civilian uses of weapons.” He said such evidence “is nowhere to be found.”

Justice Stephen Breyer wrote a separate dissent in which he said, “In my view, there simply is no untouchable constitutional right guaranteed by the Second Amendment to keep loaded handguns in the house in crime-ridden urban areas.”

This monumental ruling has to be a disappointment to all liberals and especially troubling for Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi (D). She not only favors ignoring the Constitution by ignoring our rights to bear firearms, she admittedly boasts how she wants to reinstate the Fairness Doctrine to silence talk radio. It amazes me how the left in this country, who constantly clamor for freedom and individual rights, are the very same people who want to take those freedoms away from us in order to suit their socialist agenda.

We can expect some very interesting comments from the left in the upcoming days regarding this decision. No doubt they are already scheming to skirt the decision with typical “liberal loopholes.” Presidential hopeful, Barack Obama, who just recently praised the very same court for giving terrorist who want to kill us the very same rights law abiding Americans have, criticized today’s ruling by the court for allowing law abiding citizens to own and bear arms. This in itself I find to be most troublesome.

Liberals ignore the fact that the Constitution of the United States gives all law abiding citizens the right to own and bear firearms. On the flip side, they seem to read into the Constitution somewhere that  everyone has the right to free health care, killing babies, housing, education, and being taxed to death.

According to Dictionary dot com, a Demagogue is a political leader who gains power and popularity by arousing the emotions, passions, and prejudices of the people.

Yesterday, our Democrats friends in Congress; in a desperate attempt to distract public attention away from the fact that they have no energy policy whatsoever, dug deep into their bag of diversion tricks to dredge up an old favorite attention getter - Price Gouging.  The Democrats, in their failed attempt to resurrect the meaningless and unenforceable mothballed “Federal Price Gouging Prevention Act,” did however, provide themselves an opportunity to vote against something that sounds horribly evil, without actually accomplishing anything at all.  Except that is, for wasting valuable time on the taxpayer’s dime and giving themselves a imaginary aura of courage in their fairy tale war on the evil “Big Oil” barons. Here’s a thought. Just who are these imaginary oil barons anyway? Has anyone actually ever seen one of these so-called barons? Do they hang out with the evil and conveniently invented “futures traders” we hear so much about…I wonder?

Never mind what our friends the Democrats crowed about when they took control of Congress two years ago. They had no energy policy then and they most assuredly have no energy policy now. The only similitude of policy they seemingly have is pointing the finger of blame towards a fictitious “enemy of the state” for their own never ending energy policy failures.  In the absence of a coherent energy policy, they can come up with nothing better than to come out ineffectively against an “evil’ the just doesn’t exist.

I’m also hearing more and more about the resurrection of another lefty antidote to high gas prices. That being Jimmy Carter’s old 55 MPH national speed limits sham. It was nothing more than a typical Carteresque political diversion which did nothing at all and will do more of the same should it be brought back to life a quarter of a century later. The only thing the ridiculous law generated was additional revenue for the states due to above normal speeding violations and it made Jimmy Carter and his fellow travelers feel good about themselves. Einstein once said, “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results”. Think about those words of wisdom for a moment… does this quote apply to what we’re now seeing and hearing from our Democrat friends in Congress?

Why can’t these anit-oil, anti-capitalism Democrats just step up to the plate and display some leadership qualities for once in their self-serving lives?  America needs to drill and refine oil within our own geographical boundaries and we desperately need to build more Nuke Plants and Oil Refineries. We are the only country in the world who doesn’t harvest our own natural resources to the fullest extent and we have the wacko environmentalist and their Democrats pals in Congress to thank for it. Really dumb, don’t you think?

George Carlin, one of the true great ones, passed away yesterday in LA, he was 71. Carlin had a special talent for revealing and bringing to light the hypocrisies and idiocy of today’s society and our government’s inability to get things done correctly. Whoever coined the phrase “there is truth in mirth” knew what they were talking about and it certainly pertained to the hard living Carlin. The very liberal Carlin will be missed by this very conservative blogger. Let’s hope he wasn’t disappointed when he arrived for his final show and met the creator who blessed him with his talent. George was a non-believer as many enlightened progressives are.

In the video segment below, Carlin comes off a tad conservative as he touts his comical cynicism towards the clueless politicians who run our dysfunctional government, who in turn control our supposed meaningless lives. The language is strong…but that was just part of George Carlin’s shtick.

How many of you remember this old Erie landmark? I ran across this old postcard a few days ago and it brought back plenty of childhood memories. Click on image to enlarge.