Let us also not forget those politicians in the United States, Great Britain and Canada, past and present, who, with the United Nations, have never missed an opportunity to appease a potent enemy, whether the now defunct Soviet Union, or the latest incarnation of Islam (Iran, Saudi Arabia, Hezbollah, Syria, and Hamas), or North Korea, Cuba, Venezuela and soon Mexico.

It is remarkable how quickly politicians and media wannabes publicly criticize their own government, more often than not shifting blame to the current administration for Congress’ flawed decision making. Because of the media’s ignorance or ideology (redundant), Congress gets a “free pass.” Those who criticize the loudest are often the very people who are most unwilling to abide by the decision of the majority in a democracy, or live by existing laws. You can undoubtedly name several politicians who refuse to support the duly elected leadership, or at least acquiesce for a short period of time until the next election. Instead of carping and obstructing, they should be working industriously on various issues for the benefit of United States citizens. Instead these same politicians become obsessed with accumulating personal wealth while displaying self-righteous indignation about corruption in front of a camera at every opportunity – case in point, Senator John McCain.

What would it take for Congress to rededicate their productive efforts toward working for the best interests of the nation rather than self interest? Many have suggested that only a citizen insurrection (figuratively or literally) will restore excellence, initiative and integrity to Congress. The first reform step needed would be to deny elected public servants the opportunity to profit and accumulate personal wealth from campaign contributions at the expense of taxpayers while in office. Only then will we restore the representative republic that was once the United States of America. Only then will people undertake public service not solely motivated by becoming obscenely wealthy.

Until that day in another lifetime, unprincipled political opportunists unwilling to wait for the next opportunity to vote, will continue to undermine the will of the people and subvert their own fragile democracy in the pursuit of self interest. Without any semblance of shame, many Congressmen openly engage in undermining the domestic and foreign policies of those who occupy the highest political offices. This is no less a warfare tactic than that used by proponents of Islam. A close study of both would reveal how similar they are.

Unfortunately, lumpen are most frequently the victims of propaganda and slick political deceit. Lumpen uniformly fail to recognize that the majority of politicians really don’t care about winning any war – a mindset so callous that it winds up costing the lives of young men and women. Nor do liberals care about right or wrong or what is at stake. Theirs is an ideology. The word “team” should be an antonym of the word “liberal.” There is no “I” in the word “team.” Liberals, by their intellectual wiring, want desperately to be in charge, whether in a corporation, a small company, the homeowners association, the city government, the state government or Congress. Ballots are full of liberal candidates seeking control over the lives of others – the name of the political party is irrelevant. As an aside, conservatives typically don’t seek public office.

Liberals are uniformly confident in their belief that we would all be better off if we lived our lives and raised our children according to their standards. They are only too glad to impose rules on the rest of us – standards of egalitarian equality achieved by redistributing all income, education, medicine, transportation, and housing among the bottom 50% of wage earners who pay no taxes, plus lavish corporate benefactors with earmarks in return for campaign contributions. As for liberals, it is their pathological desire to be among the elite in a class-structured society. It is all about power, stupid – their power and our servitude! In fact, if I were to ask what best describes a conservative who works like a liberal; you would have to respond, “A lazy bastard.”

Democracy is so inconvenient to liberals who are sure, in spite of history and lack of fact-based education, that they are correct on all social issues. Just look at the courts and make a note who among our citizens advocates judicial activism. Try to appreciate how many decisions have been taken away from the American people – democracy denied – regarding religion, abortion, school choice, enforcement of immigration, voting rights, marriage, welfare, freedom of speech, private property, gun ownership, pledge of allegiance, competition for jobs or a college education, equal standards of performance by everyone in the same job regardless of race or gender, etc. None of these issues are within the jurisdiction of the courts and most of these issues are not the prerogative of the federal government. Even organizations such as the Education Department and FEMA are outside the scope of federal authority under the U.S. Constitution – as is Foreign Aid and corporate welfare. Now it has come to pass that the media, politicians and federal courts are dictating military strategy, tactics and morality to the Executive Branch – again interfering in matters outside their constitutional scope of authority.

We have watched numb in horror as the media glories in the deaths of American soldiers, displaying the numbers and changing the totals the way a gas station displays changes in prices. The media does it because they know it horrifies every real American. Congressmen engage in the same behavior, trumpeting the numbers from behind a microphone, ignoring the fact that it was Congress (not the President) who sent (authorized and funded) the U.S. Armed Forces intervention first in Viet Nam and now in the Middle East. This duplicity is an intentional liberal tactic of disunion and reveals how little value politicians place on the lives of American servicemen and women – which it turns out, is about the same as the value Hezbollah (Islam) places on the lives of civilians.

All of this carnage is intentionally “in your face.” It is cynically intended to create an alternate reality, to portray to you who should have been in charge of this over-sized homeowner’s association from the outset. It is also meant to show us that we were wrong to elect who we did. While supremely confident that everything would have been much different and much better if it wasn’t for your and my ignorant mistakes voting for the wrong people, liberals in general and the Democratic Party in particular, work diligently to undermine the current administration and democracy itself. If only there was a more eloquent word than “despicable” to convey the disdain all American’s should feel toward such people – the same people who refuse to secure our nation’s borders or protect American jobs.

Add to this inauspicious group of subversives a large number of uneducated and unelected members of the main-stream-media who live in a rabbit hole of reality, each born with various and sundry body parts but few with a brain or a spine. I am speaking specifically of the visual and print news media, and the sports and entertainment industries, whose representatives speak and behave as if they would like nothing more that to engineer an outcome in which America loses this conflict with Islam. Hollywood seems incapable of understanding that if our nation loses, we all lose, and those that have the most will lose the most. And Israel will lose it all – first. Never mind their disproportionate intellectual contributions to humanity. Unless we play to lose this event in history called “The Islamic Wars” by the rules of engagement of the Democratic Party, these wing nuts will defiantly disrupt yours and my fight for liberty, and deny our very survival. If you won’t agree to do it their way, to lose, they will see to it that you cannot win – not only in Iraq and Afghanistan, but also in our economy, schools, and courts.

Do memories of Senators Kennedy, Kerry, Durbin, Pelosi, Rangel, Reid and Murtha come to mind – and on any given day, even John McCain? What about the Dixie Chicks, Rosie O’Donnell, Susan Sarandon, Jane Fonda, Barbara Streisand, Danny Glover and George Soros?

In all fairness, there are a number of legitimate questions regarding policies and actions of the CIA, Defense and State Department leading up to the Islamic Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. There is also current disturbing evidence of their appalling political unwillingness to decisively win at any cost, and in doing so preserve the lives of young American soldiers.

Whether emanating from Congress or the Administration, hardly a day goes by that we don’t think something was a lame-brain decision. However, to disagree with the Islamic Wars or some aspect of United States foreign policy is one thing, but such disagreement should not make any American want to become a New York Times subversive or leak classified information out of the State Department or CIA. Most citizens (those that care) recognize that intentionally revealing vital intelligence, or limiting intelligence collection, will result in the deaths of even more American soldiers and civilians.

Those unfortunate human beings who proudly undermine the elected administration mistakenly claim to be Americans. They see themselves as defenders of democracy, when in fact their actions repudiate their own American birthright and disavow democracy. One thing is certain; these people represent the finest socialist traditions and constitute the heart and soul of the Democratic Party. Some have the distinction of being a growing cancer in the Republican Party. Let history record that Congressmen don’t care a hoot about our sons or daughters. In fact, their unwillingness to abide by any democratic process and the will of the people for four short years arguably demonstrates they should not be entitled to call themselves Americans.

We seriously doubt that the concept of being an “American” is understood by the majority of the Democratic Party. We doubt that there is anything in life greater than “self” to a liberal – and we repeatedly hear that nothing associated with American culture or nationalism is worth defending. To their eternal shame, Democrats fail to see any difference between Islam and Christianity. Therein is the divide. We fail to see much difference today between Democrats and radical Muslims, either in ideology or tactics. Maybe there is none and the rest of us should respond accordingly.

Red State Patriot

Comments are welcome at redstatepatriot@hughes.net. Please include the title of the article as your subject line. Selected responses, in whole or part, may be published (appended to the article).

To understand how the United States became who and what we are as a nation, realize that every government decision, both in this and past generations, has led us to this point in history. We are, as a nation, the cumulative result of decades of judicial decisions and Congressional legislation. Legislation is without exception agenda driven, politically motivated, sometimes self-serving and often ill-conceived. Yesterday's and today’s Congressional legislation eventually becomes cumulative, which when combined with judicial fiats of the Supreme Court, creates the American culture you can expect for the next decade.

The polarization of our culture is the proximate result of too many binding national decisions occurring outside a legitimate democratic process, i.e., imposed on Americans without their vote.

One has only to look closely at each “first family” to accurately assess the culture of the prevailing times during that presidency. Bill and Hillary Clinton, for example, were a frightening reflection of our national self and our decaying society, committing seeming endless felony crimes without accountability, defended by liberals who seemed themselves without faith or value systems, selling everything that wasn’t nailed down including national defense technology, running the White House Motel and looting the place upon their departure. The nation hadn’t seen an act like the Clintons since the Atlantic City Diving Horse. The same mentality pervades both political parties in today's Congress.

As you would expect, every liberal expressed pride in the Clintons and every conservative felt revulsion. In large part, American’s today have never been more polarized on the direction and destination of their bus.

We cannot always expect to agree on solutions to our problems. Some solutions are focused on more liberty (less government), and others on socialist remedies (more government). In the end we shall have to adjust our differences in a minimal spirit of goodwill and subordinate our lesser interests to the general welfare of the majority.

The important thing to do as citizens is to look at our national problems with an open mind in a spirit of fairness. Be willing and eager to listen to all sides, determined to find the truth. To do this, to the extent possible, read and listen endlessly, assemble what is learned into useful information and then make decisions. It is never possible to have all the facts or enough information to make perfect decisions, but more provides a greater opportunity to make the correct decision. "More" often begins with education and never ends in real American citizenship.

Because somebody says something, or it is published in the print media, doesn’t make it either true or a fact. That’s where individual research and “mining for facts” becomes important. It is fair to say that the facts will lead to the truth, which in turn will lead to an answer, or at least a preferred direction. The truth of a matter (as it is without makeup) is what is important. Truth is the converse of spin and obfuscation. Which you choose to believe, truth or spin, or which is truth or spin, is ideological.

Your best course is to be the slave of no man or a blind follower of any man's crusade, liberal or conservative. The better choice would be to "serve" the American people with honor and integrity rather than permitting the self-interest of those attempting to rule. In other words, we should be working for the welfare of all American citizens rather than political self-interest of only a few. Accept and follow the sovereignty of your own mind.

What is in the best interest of the majority of American citizens is most often in the best interest of America! For example, is less crime, better education and immigration control in the best interest of each American citizen? Then those issues should be a national priority and the consuming focus of Congress.

Many Americans derive their social attitudes and political perspective from one newspaper or one radio or television source. The media is well aware of the literacy limitations of many Americans, products of failed government education, who neither speak English nor read. Contemporary media admits their presentations are intentionally biased and that they are pursuing a political agenda. The media goal has become one of targeting and misinforming Americans in the pursuit of socialist ideology, i.e., more government rather than less, with media ensconced as the brain cell of the Democratic Party.

Many citizens, in what could be called "the lost generation," are legitimate victims of the public school system, and/or sadly ignorant by choice. These tragic individuals, of all heritages, have little choice but to make decisions based solely on their own prejudices and emotions, most of which are derived from the media, which has degenerated in recent years to the level of propaganda. Statesmen have become rare. As a result of the main stream media, the Ship of State is torn and threatened by conflicting gales of uninformed public prejudice.

One way we can turn it around is with the truth and a vote.

It is not easy to know the truth, especially if a person denies clear channel access to their intellect and common sense. There is always the possibility that even the most conscientious citizen will make mistakes in judgment. Truth, supported by facts and history, remains an important principle if democracy in America is to survive and adapt itself to the new and changing threats of our time, not the least of which is Islamofascism.

You should be aware that there are many among us to whom truth is irrelevant. They call themselves liberals or centrists. Expect nothing less and be surprised at nothing. Endless falsehoods are necessary to cause you to vote against your own self interest, and in effect to steal your vote.

To a liberal, the end justifies the means; the result justifies the tactics; their power justifies the lies. To a conservative, the truth simply is! Always has and always will be.

Red State Patriot
9-17-2005

Comments are welcome at redstatepatriot@hughes.net. Please include the title of the article as your subject line. Selected responses, in whole or part, may be published (appended to the article).

See if you can spot the neoconservative .....

Democrats want to implement windfall profit taxes, which ultimately will be passed on to the consumer at the gas pump and raise prices ever higher – significantly higher. The outcome is a foregone conclusion, i.e., politicians cynically win, having found a way to take even more of your money, and citizens lose. Republicans, i.e., neoconservatives, knowing that raising taxes would be a national economic disaster, want instead to punish the speculators who they choose to scapegoat for the rising prices. The similarity between the Democrats and Republicans (neither of whom are conservatives) is their propensity for shifting the blame for their own congressional malfeasance to anyone but themselves, refusing defiantly to take responsibility for the on-going energy debacle. ‘Shifting the blame’ is the single most common character trait of a liberal – every liberal. They, being the typical congressmen they are, would sacrifice their relatives before accepting accountability, even their grandmother.

The energy crisis we face as a nation due to lack of oil, nuclear, coal, refineries, and absence of exploration will never be their fault, just as the loss of jobs and outsourcing of entire industries is not their fault, just as the drunken overspending with earmarks and entitlements is not their fault, just as the abysmal failure of our nation’s public schools is not their fault, nor the open borders, nor the failing Social Security and Medicare systems.

Here is everything you need to know in two articles. The first appeared in the Wall Street Journal in February, 1989 and the second in Investor’s Business Daily on June 23, 2008

Red State Patriot
----------------

The Speculator as Hero
Wall Street Journal
February 10, 1989

This is not a good time for speculators. Last month the FBI and the Chicago U.S. Attorney's office accused more than 100 traders on the Chicago commodities exchanges of systematically cheating investors and the government out of millions of dollars. Lawyers in Chicago have been besieged by floor traders wishing to plead guilty to the charges.

Coming on the heels of the October 1987 stock market crash, popularly thought to be the fault of program traders and portfolio insurers, and amid the popular furor over insider trading, the speculator's stock may be at an all-time low. Even fictional speculators are in trouble. In Tom Wolfe's best seller "Bonfire of the Vanities," bond trader Sherman McCoy is ridiculed by his wife, and is unable to explain what he does for a living to his young daughter. In real life, noted currency trader Andy Krieger, in a widely reported incident in 1987, quit his job after he found himself unable to supply a satisfactory answer to his eight-year-old son's question about what good his job did.

Like Sherman McCoy and Andy Krieger, I am a speculator. I own seats on the Chicago Board of Trade and Chicago Mercantile Exchange. But when my daughters ask me if my job is as important as the butcher's, the doctor's or the scientist's, I answer that the speculator is a hero, and has been throughout history.

Some speculators are discoverers like Christopher Columbus, creators like Henry Ford, or inventors like Thomas Edison. Their job is easy to place on a high plane. My role in the grander order is indirect, relatively invisible and unplanned. The only discoveries I make are the routes that prices will travel. Like hundreds of thousands of other traders, I try to predict the prices of common goods a day or two or a few months in the future. If I think the price of an item will go up, I buy today and sell later. If I think the price is going down, I'll sell at today's higher price. The miracle is that in taking care of ourselves, we speculators somehow ensure that producers all over the world will provide the right quantity and quality of goods at the proper time, without undue waste, and that this meshes with what people want and the money they have available.

Politicians eager to "do something" about high prices often make laws to punish the speculator. A representative incident occurred during the reign of Emperor Diocletian in Rome in A.D. 300. Speculators were withholding scarce provisions from the hordes, hoping to unload when the demand was even more intense. To remedy this, Diocletian set the highest price for beef, grains, clothing and several hundred other items. Anyone who sold at a higher price would be put to death.

The result? As reported by Lactantius in A.D. 314: "Much blood was shed upon slight and trifling accounts. The people brought no more provisions to the markets, since they could not get a reasonable price for them, and this increased the dearth so much that at last after many had died by it, the law itself was laid aside."

Another representative incident occurred during the siege of Antwerp by the Spanish in 1585. Antwerp was then the leading commercial town of Europe. The Spanish decided to blockade the port to force surrender when supplies gave out. Knowing this, Antwerp farmers and bakers produced large amounts of bread. Privateers ran the blockade at great peril to provide needed supplies. Prices began to rise. Speculators, guessing that bread was going to be scarce, contributed to further price rises through shrewd purchases.

But Antwerp politicians thought it wrong for greedy speculators to profit from war. The politicians fixed a very low maximum price to everything that could be eaten, and prescribed severe penalties for violators. The consequence was inevitable. Privateers stopped running the blockades and the supply of grain dried up. Consumers had no incentive to economize. The citizens ran out of all their provisions after six months of the siege and the Antwerpers starved. They surrendered and were quickly annexed.
Let's consider some of the principles that explain the causes of shortages and surpluses and the role of speculators.

When a harvest is too small to satisfy consumption at its normal rate, speculators come in, hoping to profit from the scarcity by buying. Their purchases raise the price, thereby checking consumption so that the smaller supply will last longer. Producers encouraged by the high price further lessen the shortage by growing or importing to reduce the shortage. On the other side, when the price is higher than the speculators think the facts warrant, they sell. This reduces prices, encouraging consumption and exports and helping to reduce the surplus.

Of course, speculators aren't always correct. When they are wrong, their actions contribute to shortages or gluts. Manias such as the Tulipmania, the South Sea Bubble, the Mississippi Bubble, gold panics, stock market crashes, and violent swings in the value of the dollar are frequently cited as examples of occasions when speculators contributed to instability and imbalance. But who could do the job better?

Bureaucrats have little incentive to improve, invest or innovate. When speculators are wrong, however, they are punished severely for their mistakes by losses of their own money. If left unchecked, the tendencies of our modern kings (read: government – emphasis added) to interfere with the natural working of the marketplace would lead to destruction. But speculators, searching for profit, send signals to producers and consumers as to the forces of destruction and good.

Traders sent such a signal on October 19, 1987, when they dropped the wealth of the non-Japanese-speaking world by 10% in one day when a modern-day king tried to interfere with the natural order by driving the dollar down one last 5% or so.

Perhaps the most positive impact of our current-day speculators is to check at inception governmental activities that would have an inflationary impact. Governments are prone to spend more money on their activities than they take in through taxes. The consequence often has been substantial inflation, followed by war, revolution and destruction of civilization. Nowadays, however, bond traders are so alert to the long-term consequences of such activities that they immediately send debt yields up significantly at the first sign of inflation.

The increased yields have such a negative and immediate impact on government revenue, business activity, and consumer spending that governments have all but given up trying to sneak increased spending past the market. As a result, the rate of inflation slowed markedly throughout the Western world during the 1980s. At the end of last year the long-term yield on a 30-year U.S. Treasury bond was 8.8% vs. 14.4% on the day after President Reagan was first elected. The great era of prosperity that has accompanied this reduced inflation adds a feather to the speculator's cap.

Granted, speculators are not angels; many are motivated by gambling and greed, and when given the chance will take advantage of the public as much as the next person.
What is the net effect of such evilness? Consider the purchase of one Treasury bond futures contract, the most actively traded futures contract. This is where the U.S. Attorney apparently focused his investigation after the undercover agents suffered huge losses for the government's account in stock market futures during the October 1987 crash.

To buy the equivalent of $100,000 in bonds, an average customer might pay $17.50 in commission (half of a typical $35 commission for one contract's purchase and sale) and $31.25 (one "tick"), the usual spread between the bid price and the ask price. This adds up to a $48.75 transaction cost for each $100,000 purchase.

Compare this with the "gentlemanly" New York Stock Exchange, where market-making speculators have a monopoly on trading in individual stocks. To purchase $100,000 of IBM stock (about 800 shares), the most actively traded Big Board issue, an average customer might pay 40 cents a share in commission costs and a 25-cent-a-share bid-ask spread. This $520 transaction cost is more than 10 times the cost to trade the same dollar amount of futures contracts.

Much of the suspected wrongdoing in Chicago apparently involved unscrupulous futures brokers who misreported customer transactions or gave customers unfavorable prices. But even if a bond-futures broker, for example, stole an additional $31.25 tick on every customer order, the liquidity of the market would still be far greater than that of the less-competitive Big Board. The customer would still be paying only one-sixth of the cost of the same trade in IBM stock.

This example serves not to exonerate crooked futures brokers, but to demonstrate the efficiency of a competitive market. Despite the overwhelming evidence that the speculator gets the job done, governments have attempted to bypass speculators in the name of a higher good.

The intellectual raises his eyebrows at the economic and historical analysis and contemptuously says, "Man cannot live by bread alone." To this I respond that without us, there would be no bread.

I am proud to be a speculator. I am proud that my humble attempts to predict Tuesday's prices on Monday are an indispensable component of our society. By buying low and selling high, I create harmony and freedom.

Mr. Niederhoffer is chairman of NCZ Commodities. This article appeared in the February 10, 1989, issue of The Wall Street Journal. Dow Jones and Co., Inc., 1989.

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Just Speculating
Investor's Business Daily
June 23, 2008

Energy: Democrats, in their never-ending search for scapegoats, have had a go at oil company CEOs, industry profits and now oil "speculators." They've looked everywhere but where they should — in the mirror.

The congressional hearings that kicked off Monday to look into speculative behavior in the markets produced all the usual finger-pointing about the doubling in oil prices over the past year to nearly $137 a barrel.

Meanwhile, Barack Obama, seeking to catch a political wave he can ride all the way to the presidency, has announced he'll "crack down" on oil speculation by imposing new limits and regulations on oil traders in the futures markets.

But as emotionally satisfying as going after speculators sounds, this will only make our current oil problem much worse.

Its true there's speculation in the oil market. But then again, there's speculation in virtually every exchange-traded good — from oil and gold to corn and pork bellies. This isn't just acceptable, it's healthy.

Speculators aren't evil. They ensure a liquid market for the commodities we need most. They make money by buying low, when the product is in low demand, and selling high, when demand has grown.

It has been pretty easy for them to make money recently, because speculation in oil has become a one-way bet.

Global oil demand has been growing by about a million barrels a day each year — thanks to surging use in fast-growing China, India, the Middle East and parts of Eastern Europe. Supply hasn't kept pace. In fact, it's falling at key suppliers including Mexico, Venezuela, Nigeria and Russia. So the price rises.

The logical answer to any question about speculation in a market is: What are you doing to boost supply? In the case of Congress and the solution offered by Obama, the answer is nothing.

They would punish people who do economically useful work, but wouldn't add a drop to our oil supply. If they really wanted to break the back of speculation, they should signal that they intend to use every means at their disposal to bring energy markets back in line.

High prices already have curbed demand here in the U.S., the latest data show. What's left is to drill for the literally hundreds of billions of barrels of oil we have here in this country locked up offshore, in Alaska and in vast shale-oil reserves.

Instead, the Democrat-led Congress has pursued foolish energy policies that lead inevitably to higher prices, less supply and declining standards of living for all Americans.

As for speculation, one tell-tale sign of market manipulation is a buildup of inventories kept off the market to keep prices high. That is, as the price runs up, the speculators pull supply off the market.

Is that happening? No. Oil inventories, in the most recent data, are down year over year. No one's hoarding oil.

Claims of surging speculation likewise fall apart on closer examination. It's true that speculative positions in oil have jumped from 37% of all oil traded in 2000 to 70% now. But much of that trading involves commercial hedging and risk-management — not speculation by people out to make a killing.

As the Commodity Futures Trading Commission notes: "There are almost as many short speculative positions as there are long positions." In other words, speculators are betting as much that prices will drop as they will rise.

In short, there's no real evidence that speculators are driving energy prices up. But there's plenty of evidence that Congress' refusal to permit drilling is a big factor keeping supplies down.

By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY
June 23, 2008

Comments are welcome at redstatepatriot@hughes.net. Please include the title of the article as your subject line. Selected responses, in whole or part, may be published (appended to the article).

Since polar bears have been around for hundreds of thousands of years, the notion that polar bears might suddenly go missing in 50 years seems questionable – no, laughable – no, ludicrous. And look how many people bought into that too!

I can hear you asking, “Do you mean to say there is NO science to support the contention of future polar bear extinction?”

Gather around; you don’t want to miss this. Listen to my words. The irrefutable fact is: the habitat of polar bears is in the open waters of Alaska where geologists believe there are major reserves of undiscovered oil and natural gas. Pause. Are you beginning to see the faint outline of the big picture?

You may also recall that ANWR, the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, just happens to be in a desolate location in the northeastern corner of Alaska, far above the Arctic Circle, in an area which is believed to contain vast reserves of oil. ANWR began as the Arctic National Wildlife Range in 1960 as the culmination of efforts by Sierra Club environmental activists. In 1980 the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act renamed "Range" to "Refuge," increased the total area of the Refuge, designated a large portion as Wilderness, expanded the purposes, authorized Congress to consider a portion of the coastal plain for oil and gas development, and designated three Wild Rivers. The refuge is huge, something close to 20 million acres.

Within ANWR is the "10-02 Area," which encompasses 1.5 million acres of the refuge's coastal plain. Within the 10-02 Area, 2000 acres or less is needed for oil extraction, an area comparative in size to a USPS postage stamp placed on a football field. If oil is discovered as expected, and still there are no guarantees, less than two thousand acres would be affected, out of 20 million acres, less than one tenth of one percent of ANWR, and probably closer to one-one-hundreth of one percent when all is said and done.

In 1980, the U.S. Congress mandated studies of the petroleum potential and biological resources of the ANWR area, which continue today at taxpayer expense, and the development debate about the 10-02 Area continues. During that time, the active oil field at the North Slope has declined from its peak of 2 million barrels in 1980 to less than 750,000 barrels a day today. In 2007, the US imported an average of 60% of its oil and during certain months up to 64%. That equates to over $330 billion in oil imports. That’s $37.75 million per hour gone out of our economy! Factor in the cost to defend our imported oil, and the costs in jobs and industry sent abroad, the total would be nearly a trillion dollars annually.

So what is the problem? Why hasn't Congress done something to develop ANWR, particularly since no nation on earth has more proven energy reserves? Don't believe me? Look for yourself.

Environmentalists claim the 2000 acres to be developed in the 10-02 Area are an important habitat to the Porcupine and Central Arctic Caribou Herds (which migrates through Prudhoe Bay and has grown from 3,000 animals to its current level of 32,000 animals), as well as many other species. I’m not making this up folks. This is why you don’t have oil from ANWR, or for that matter, nuclear energy in other parts of the country, or petroleum refineries, or coal for energy.

But the footprint of development is not the real issue.

Insidiously, as if in lockstep, we recently learned from a press release that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Fisheries Service had accepted a petition from “a California environmental group seeking protection under the Endangered Species Act for an ice seal called the ‘ribbon seal’ that inhabits Alaska’s Bering Sea.”

Anybody with a “low government intelligence warning light,” which typically should be on all the time, would have seen the warning light begin to flash (and alarms begin to sound). Many other lights on my caution panel began flashing, the most worrisome was labeled, “a subversive national enemy has been detected.”

As a one-time resident of Alaska and former Arctic survival instructor, intimately familiar with this area, let me assure you that in short order, maybe only a matter of months, several other varieties of seals, the bearded, spotted, and ringed seals for example, would be proposed for addition to the protection list by so-called environmentalists.

There would be humor in this ignorance if it were not for the huge national threat we face from our nation’s ideologically-driven enemies and state-sponsored religious extremists.

What the seals primarily need protection from is the 50,000 polar bears and other large maritime creatures. Seals are considered a three-course meal by any number of arctic and sub-arctic predators. It’s called “nature.” Human predation is extremely minor by comparison, but environmental extremists trumpet that “they” want all human activity to stop.

Why anyone listens to environmentalists, I have no idea. They want you to die. They would introduce the Andromeda Strain if they could, using "environmentalism" as an excuse for the atrocity. As you would expect, the animals are but a pawn – without real meaning except to those being duped. The animals are being used as a Trojan horse by non-uniformed combatants of foreign nations and anti-American ideologues to get inside the legislative gates of our nation’s defenses – nothing more.

The Endangered Species Act, which once-upon-a-time was used to support recovery of a species such as the bald eagle, has been hijacked for its advantageous use as a strategic weapon. It has been hugely successful.

While our youth fight for our mortal existence in the Muslim Wars in foreign lands, at home we’ve been fighting for decades in a different but equally deadly culture war with legal and political insurgents already entrenched inside the United States. Their most visible goal has been to replace God with government, i.e., to indoctrinate society to view an omnipotent government as if it were god, demanding that we turn to government, instead of faith, for the solution to all of mankind’s self-induced problems. Those who have accepted conversion to secularism, either because they fear molestation in a church and no longer attend, or they don’t understand the gravity of surrendering their liberty, have quietly transitioned from being owners of private property to becoming government property.

Given that environmentalists are willfully denying energy, food, and as many as 750,000 jobs across the nation that would arise from ANWR development, you would think it would be sufficient evidence to convince anyone that is both awake and conscious that these people with environmentalism as a 'cause' genuinely hate the United States and want to facilitate our nation’s destruction.

An analysis of House Democratic and Republican voting records on recent domestic energy expansion bills, making its way around the Internet, reveals that Democrats voted approximately 85% AGAINST and Republicans supported these bills by more than 90% IN FAVOR on average. Here's the breakdown of several important issues -

ANWR Exploration
Republicans: 91% Supported Democrats: 86% Opposed

Coal-to-Liquid
Republicans: 97% Supported Democrats: 78% Opposed

Oil Shale Exploration
Republicans: 90% Supported Democrats: 86% Opposed

Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) Exploration
Republicans: 81% Supported Democrats: 83% Opposed

Refinery Increased Capacity
Republicans: 97% Supported Democrats: 96% Opposed

Think about three quarters of a million jobs for people, many with families, who are currently unemployed and financially struggling. How could these jobs not have been a factor in the severity of the housing debacle and accompanying meltdown of the economy?

What is the only possible outcome of keeping Americans from having access to the oil that powers their once thriving economy, the engine of the planet, and jobs? Prosperty? We’re talking about an economy that now tries desperately to survive with a plastic bag held over its head by our nation’s enemies, foreign and domestic, many of whom are disguised as environmentalists, and many of the remainder are affiliated with communist organizations or beholding to Middle Eastern governments. That would definitely include Barack Hussein Obama.

The jury is not in on John McCain, who has only recently back-peddled on his opposition to off-shore drilling in coastal areas. Importantly, he has consistently refused to support ANWR development - and is adamant in his refusal even today. In my voter's handbook, that makes John McCain the handmaiden of our nation's enemies. The question is simple: Will John Mccain continue to choose his environmental and subversive benefactors over his own nation and fellow citizens? Will John McCain find his patriotism, or remain as he appears today, a legitimate 'Enemy of the State'. The jury should be in soon. Given that past performance accurately predicts future actions, I remain hopeful but not optomistic.

Environmentalists appear to be trying to unceremoniously finish us off by plugging the few holes that remain in the plastic bag.

It’s worth noting that the same thing happened to the ACLU which began as a civil rights watchdog. Now its only use is as a weapon of culture litigation (another plastic bag over the top of the first one) to hinder and obstruct the national interests of the United States. The same applies to the plastic bag that passes as the main-stream-media, people more ideologically aligned with communists, and Muslim terrorists incarcerated in GITMO, than Americans. You can think of other examples, arguably the Democratic Party and a majority of the Republican Party. Let’s not forget the Supreme Court and Federal Judges! It’s hard for liberty to breathe through that many layers of plastic bags, but that’s the idea – the ultimate goal is “lights out” in America.

The two principal political parties today seem to this observer to more closely resemble organized crime families than anything else, having simply taken ethical degeneracy to a national level in the process of seeking self-interest, control and access to taxpayer funds to augment their personal wealth and rock-star lifestyle.

Reducing our much vaunted dependence on oil from the Middle East seems like a good thing to most people, but not to the enemies of the United States, especially the communists and socialists among us, and particularly not to those nations who consistently vote against anything that might benefit the United States in the United Nations. That’s the rub. Their unified goal is to strangle the United States economy, i.e., to bring the USA to its knees – to suffocate its citizens.

If you remember nothing else, it is energy and liberty that powers the United States economy. Faith powers culture. Their combination is the oxygen of the United States of America. Our enemies know they can and will suffocate the United States by denying Americans energy, liberty and faith.