Archive for the ‘Foreign Policy’ Category

By: Luke Puckett

Recent events have showed us how important it is that we become energy independent not only for our own economic prosperity but also for our own security. Over 30 years ago our nation experienced a severe energy crisis because 12% of our annual oil supply was provided by foreign sources of oil. Today, we are even more vulnerable as nearly 70% of our oil energy needs are met by foreign sources that are all too often hostile to our interests and our values.

The threat posed by our reliance on foreign oil is illustrated by the recent conflict between Russia and our brave but small ally Georgia. Russia’s irresponsible, unfortunate and inappropriate bullying of Georgia is not about liberating some radical groups from imagined atrocities. It is about Russia’s expansion of power not just into neighboring states but into the global scene.

A key network of oil and natural gas pipelines stretches across Georgia. This network, which was due for an expansion until Russia’s aggressive destruction jeopardized the construction of new pipelines, is a vital link between Caucasus oil and natural gas resources and the energy users of Europe and the United States. Russia’s drastic invasion has allowed them to seize strategic control of the pipelines and it has given them the power to negotiate for world acceptance of their heavy-handed and anti-freedom actions.

Also looming large as a threat to our security is Iran’s control of the flow of roughly 40% of the world’s daily oil output. Iran’s leaders have stated that it is their aim to end America and destroy the ideals of liberty. We may consider these thugs crazed and incoherent, but we must take their apocalyptic declarations seriously because they are even now building and honing their capacity to execute their dark visions.

The time for words should be over; the time for action is now. We must put the world on notice that we will not sacrifice the strength of our national security on the altar of outdated government red-tape regulations that form a nearly impenetrable dam to the flow of our own domestic energy resources. We must move boldly and quickly to allow for a dramatic expansion of environmentally responsible domestic oil drilling.

Our children should not have to grow up in a world where their freedom and their mobility is dictated to them by backward looking tyrants who desperately seek to maintain some semblance of control in a world where their ideology has been discarded as a failure. You and I have a responsibility to strengthen our security and secure our future. I pledge to you that if you elect me to Congress this November, I will go to Washington to fight out of touch politicians to lower your gas prices.

Luke Puckett is running for Congress in Indiana’s 2nd Congressional District on a platform of common-sense solutions. You can learn more about him by visiting his website at www.puckett08.com.

From Investors Business Daily, earlier this month (before Sarah Palin was even on any VP speculation lists):

As congressional Democrats dither on a vote for oil drilling, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin has pushed through a gas pipeline project to bring new supply and price relief to the lower 48.

On Aug. 1, the same day the call for a vote on drilling began on the House floor, the Alaska state Senate approved a package of measures to license a new natural gas pipeline. House Bill 3001 lets Palin award the Alaska Gasline Inducement Act license to TransCanada Alaska, a pipeline builder that cast a winning bid of five.

The legislature had been trying for 30 years to authorize something like this and, up until now, had blown it. Palin got it through. Getting it off the ground, the state says, will be the biggest construction project in U.S. history.

(Read more after the leap) (more…)

Posted in Elections, Energy, Foreign Policy, Presidential Politics, Sarah Palin | 18 Comments » | Read more..

It’s over! We finally know. Plenty has been blogged/reported/tweeted, Birch’s boy, I’m sure, shed many a tear (though the coif remained resilient as ever) over not getting picked and for some reason, Republicans and Democrats rejoiced at the choice of Senator Joe Biden at Barack’s running mate.

Why could a liberal Democrat senator from Delaware bring these two groups together?  It’s because we each got what we wanted.

Obama and the nutroots got their attack dog (rather than the lapdog Bayh would have been) who has the experience in foreign policy that Obama sorely lacks, he’s a vocal critic of the war even though he initially supported it, plus he brings more experience in general to the ticket. Yay, for Democrats.

What did Republicans get that makes us almost giddy over the choice of Joe Biden?

Fellow contributor Scott Fluhr notes over at Hoosier Pundit (via the Campaign Spot)

It’s hard for Obama supporters to play the age card any longer, as their potential veep is all of six years younger than McCain.

The candidate of hope and change selected a running mate who was first elected to public office when Obama was 9 years old. He was elected to the Senate when Obama was 11.

The bottom of the ticket running on change has been in Washington forever.

He voted for the Iraq War — which Obama touted as the most important decision since the end of the Cold War.

Biden supports a ban on partial-birth abortion. He supports deploying U.S. troops to Darfur in Sudan.

His mouth will be an absolute time bomb. Will he refer to Delaware as a “slave state” again?

And of course, there’s this:

(H/T - Hoosier Pundit)

Evan Bayh appeared Sunday morning on Face the Nation on CBS.

Let’s just charitably say it wasn’t his best performance.

The transcript isn’t up yet, so I’ll settle for the reporting on the Indy Star.

Interviewed on CBS’ “Face the Nation,” the Indiana Democrat said McCain is given to “bellicose rhetoric which has a tendency to inflame conflicts rather than to defuse them.”

This “bellicose rhetoric which has a tendency to inflame conflicts rather than defuse them” would stem from McCain supposedly, according to The One’s own advisers and surrogates, having “roughly the same position” as the Obamassiah?

From the Washington Post:

Richard Holbrooke, an ambassador to the U.N. in the Clinton administration and an Obama supporter, objected to the suggestion that Obama had been late in coming to a tough condemnation of Russia. Obama and McCain are now more or less on the same page in decrying the aggression, he said.

“It is based on an exaggerated and deliberately misleading perception of Senator Obama’s initial statement, which was issued early, while the crisis was unfolding,” he said. “This is an attempt by people supporting Senator McCain to politicize a great international tragedy and it’s not worthy of the dimensions of the problem, especially when both candidates have roughly the same position.”

Perhaps Evan Bayh should explain himself.

Which is it?

Does Barack Obama have “roughly the same position” as John McCain?

Are they “more or less on the same page in decrying the aggression”?

How do such statements square with Bayh’s assertion that McCain is engaging in “bellicose rhetoric”?

(Read more after the leap) (more…)