Democratic Doublespeak on Oil

Every time I see Nancy Pelosi on television I shake my head at the ignorance and hypocrisy.  A July 10th Associated Press story reported that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called on President Bush to release oil from the government's emergency reserve to knock down gasoline prices she says "are helping push the economy toward recession."

Pelosi, D-Calif., in a letter to Bush noted that the Strategic Petroleum Reserve has been used three times before and each time the action has served to stabilize oil markets and lower gas prices.

Action is needed "to assist consumers and strengthen the economy," Pelosi said.

The threats to the economy and national security from high oil prices "are the kind of circumstances ... in which utilization of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve is more than justified," Pelosi wrote in the letter sent late Tuesday.

It appears to me that Nancy Pelosi is saying more oil released into the market will lower prices at the pump, and such a decrease is a critical step toward our economic recovery.

On the same day as the above Associate Press story, a story at TheHill.com reported,

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) on Thursday shut the door on expanding oil and gas drilling beyond areas that have already been approved for energy exploration, drawing a clear distinction from her counterparts in charge of the Senate.

“This call for drilling in areas that are protected is a hoax, it’s an absolute hoax on the part of the Republicans and this administration” Pelosi said at her weekly press conference. “It’s a decoy to punt your attention away from the fact that their policies have produced $4-a-gallon gasoline.”

So let me get this straight.  Pelosi and her Democratic henchmen will not allow discussion about getting more oil onto the market by drilling millions of barrels a day out of our own ground.  But, to lower gas prices through putting more oil on the market, she will begin depleting the national reserve that is in place to get us through military or natural catastrophes.

Presumptive Democratic nominee Obama said in a June 13th interview with Gannett media in Wisconsin,

"If we reduce our consumption of oil, that's what will reduce gas prices. There's really no other way of doing it," the presumptive Democratic nominee said in a one-on-one interview Thursday with Gannett Wisconsin Media during a campaign stop in Kaukauna. "We can't drill our way out of the problem because there's just a finite amount of oil out there, and you have got increasing demand from countries like China and India.  (Source: Green Bay Press Gazette)

Pelosi says more oil on the market will reduce gas prices, but only oil from the strategic reserve, not oil from the ground.  Obama says that more oil on the market will do nothing to lower prices, we just have to use less.

Are they just stupid?  Or is there a bigger agenda at work here?  I think it's an agenda, because neither of these two people are stupid.  There is an agenda coming from environmentalists to eliminate the use of fossil fuels.  And there is an agenda coming from the Democratic side to, through all possible means, blame Republicans for an energy crisis that is really the fault of the Democratic environmental lobby.

Is it any wonder that the Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid congress has achieved the lowest approval rating in the history of the Rasmussen poll. Just 9 percent of the American people approve of the job Congress is doing.