Erick Erickson's Blog, page 179

BREAKING: Rick Scott Wins

The Florida Supreme Court has ruled that Governor Rick Scott can reject high-speed rail funds from the federal government.

Scott had decided to decline high-speed rail funds for a Tampa to Orlando line and two state legislators sued him.

The Florida Supreme Court had put the bipartisan lawsuit filed Tuesday on a fast track because LaHood had given Scott until Friday to accept the money.

Scott, an outspoken critic of the stimulus program, has said he believes the rail project would put Florida taxpayers on the hook for billions in cost overruns and operating subsidies.

State Sens. Arthenia Joyner, a Tampa Democrat, and Thad Altman, a Viera Republican, disagreed and sued Scott.

They said overruns and subsidies would be the responsibility of the private company contracted to build and operate the system and argued state law gave Scott no choice but to accept the money.

As soon as the court's decision was announced, Scott telephoned U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray Lahood and said Florida was formally rejecting the funds.

No More Short Term Continuing Resolutions

I'd like to echo Congresswoman Michelle Bachmann, Heritage Action for America, and others on the right: we don't need anymore short term continuing resolutions.

Heritage Action for America has a great post up on this very point.

If the President and Senate Democrats are genuine in their desire to fund the government, cut non-security spending and avoid a shutdown, H.R.1 should be their starting point. Anything less and they will demonstrate a fundamentally unserious approach to our looming fiscal crisis.

Congresswoman Bachmann and former Congressman Ernest Istook were in Minnesota the other day making a solid point on these continuing resolutions and Obamacare.

Congresswoman Michele Bachmann (MN-06) says it's not enough for House Republicans to stop the flow of new funds to ObamaCare. Bachmann is pointing out that the healthcare measure signed into law last year by President Obama included $105 billion in advance appropriations. $5 billion will go toward ObamaCare this year and another $100 billion will be spent over the next eight years. That money was already appropriated in the Obama-Reid-Pelosi legislation and now it must be clawed back. Bachmann credits former Congressman Ernest Istook with revealing the appropriations.

See, each time the House GOP does a continuing resolution for a couple of weeks, they are able to avoid a fight on funding Obamacare — both the long term funding and the short term funding.

As Mike Hammond noted yesterday, Eric Cantor has gone on record saying, "we're trying to demonstrate right now that we don't want to see a [government] shutdown."

Well, if the Republicans are preemptively saying they want to demonstrate they don't want a government shutdown, they are going to keep nibbling at the edges and do no real cuts. They will not defund Planned Parenthood. They will not defund Obamacare.

Why?

To do either would potentially lead to a government shutdown. But Eric Cantor says they want to demonstrate that they don't "want to see a [government] shutdown."

Continuing to push through short term continuing resolutions puts off the inevitable and the necessary. Either the House Republicans are willing to defund Obamacare or they are not.

A short term continuing resolution just allows the GOP to dodge the public longer.

It's time for them to put up or shut up.

Morning Briefing for March 4, 2011

RedState Morning Briefing

For March 4, 2011

Go to www.RedStateMB.com to get
the Morning Briefing every morning at no charge.

1. No More Short Term Continuing Resolutions

2. Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH) Meets Hitler

3. Tax-Payer Funded, Union-Run NLRB Using Google to Advertise 'How to Start a Union

4. Libya Just Isn't Worth US Military Casaulties

5. Wallis' Progressive Call to Arms Misses [the] Mark

6. Olympic Logo Secret Message SCANDAL!!

———————————————————————-

1. No More Short Term Continuing Resolutions

I'd like to echo Congresswoman Michelle Bachmann, Heritage Action for America, and others on the right: we don't need anymore short term continuing resolutions.

Heritage Action for America has a great post up on this very point.

"If the President and Senate Democrats are genuine in their desire to fund the government, cut non-security spending and avoid a shutdown, H.R.1 should be their starting point. Anything less and they will demonstrate a fundamentally unserious approach to our looming fiscal crisis."

Congresswoman Bachmann and former Congressman Ernest Istook were in Minnesota the other day making a solid point on these continuing resolutions and Obamacare. . . .

Continuing to push through short term continuing resolutions puts off the inevitable and the necessary. Either the House Republicans are willing to defund Obamacare or they are not.

A short term continuing resolution just allows the GOP to dodge the public longer.

It's time for them to put up or shut up.

Please click here for the rest of the post.

2. Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH) Meets Hitler

Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH) is not a Nazi. But he has a history of voting for policies the Nazis championed. But he is not a Nazi. Nor is he Nazi like.

He just likes a lot of policies the Nazis championed.

That's not hyperbole. That is actual fact. I wouldn't bring this up except Sherrod Brown is calling Jim DeMint and Scott Walker "nazis" except they, just like Sherrod Brown, are not Nazis. Or something like that. Senator Brown seems confused. He's comparing them to Hitler and Stalin, but denying he is comparing them to Hitler and Stalin.

Please click here for the rest of the post.

3. Tax-Payer Funded, Union-Run NLRB Using Google to Advertise 'How to Start a Union

Apparently, President Obama likes to ignore his advisors. Either that or some agencies in Washington missed the President's speech when he said he wanted job creation to be his number one priority. You see, one would think that, if the President really wanted to create jobs, he would listen to his economic advisors, like former National Economic Advisor Larry Summers, who wrote:

"Another cause of long-term unemployment is unionization. High union wages that exceed the competitive market rate are likely to cause job losses in the unionized sector of the economy."

Presumably, the President realizes that unions cause long-term unemployment and, if his number one priority is job creation, one would think that he might consider sending a note over to the union-controlled National Labor Relations Board and tell them to stop trying to cripple companies. Especially since the NLRB has become the de-facto union organizing committee for union bosses and is intent on cramming unions down companies' throats by any means necessary.

Please click here for the rest of the post.

4. Libya Just Isn't Worth US Military Casaulties

With all due respect to our nation's Commander-In-Chief, I fail to remember when Qaddafi's rule in Libya had any profound legitimacy that extended beyond the maximum effective range of an AK-47 Assault Rifle. Qaddafi, and his pathetic side-kick and strip-club drinking buddy, Hugo Chavez, remind me of what the portrait would have looked like if Dorian Gray had an identical twin. Yet I snark and I quibble. Qaddafi has ruled Libya for more than forty years. If there weren't any actual, suffering human beings there, I'd feel moral satisfaction in concluding that he was welcome to it.

Please click here for the rest of the post.

5. Wallis' Progressive Call to Arms Misses [the] Mark

Jim Wallis, the longtime leader of Sojourners, a Washington D.C. based ministry dedicated to articulating "the biblical call to social justice," used the opportunity in a February 24, 2011 column, "This is Not Fiscal Conservatism. It's Just Politics," to take an errant shot at recent Congressional Republican budget proposals and Wisconsin governor, Scott Walker. Reverend Wallis, as you may recall, was a religious adviser to Candidate Obama in 2008 and, over the decades, has never been shy to level sharply worded and religiously-steeped criticism at any federal or state legislative effort which he believes challenges his claimed core constituency, the poor, or his allies in the call for 'social justice.'

Criticizing Wallis, in turn, is not easy - not because he's never wrong, but because challenging him immediately draws familiar and convenient retorts that the critic isn't reflecting Christ's values, or worse yet, simply doesn't care about the poor. Conservative commentator, Glenn Beck, found himself at the end of such Wallis' barbs early last year.

Please click here for the rest of the post.

6. Olympic Logo Secret Message SCANDAL!!

Iran is Irate (that was a gimme) over the 2012 London Olympics. More specifically, over the logo, threatening to boycott the games. You see, they believe there is a hidden message in the logo. Here, first, I menacingly present the original.

Please click here for the rest of the post.

Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH) Meets Hitler

Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH) is not a Nazi. But he has a history of voting for policies the Nazis championed. But he is not a Nazi. Nor is he Nazi like.

He just likes a lot of policies the Nazis championed.

That's not hyperbole. That is actual fact. I wouldn't bring this up except Sherrod Brown is calling Jim DeMint and Scott Walker "nazis" except they, just like Sherrod Brown, are not Nazis. Or something like that. Senator Brown seems confused. He's comparing them to Hitler and Stalin, but denying he is comparing them to Hitler and Stalin.

"As a nation, I look back in history and some of the worst governments we've ever had, you know one of the the first thing they did? They went after the trade unions," he said. "Hitler didn't want unions, Stalin didn't want unions. [Former Egyptian President Hosni] Mubarak didn't want independent unions."

This is, of course, cow patties. Lefties like to say things like this all the time, but it is complete and utter nonsense. In fact, in Mien Kampf, Hitler himself wrote:

As things stand today, the trade unions in my opinion cannot be dispensed with. On the contrary, they are among the most important institutions of the nation's economic life. Their significance lies not only in the social and political field, but even more in the general field of national politics. A people whose broad masses, through a sound trade-union movement, obtain the satisfaction of their living requirements and at the same time an education, will be tremendously strengthened in its power of resistance in the struggle for existence.

Above all, the trade unions are necessary as foundation stones of the future economic parliament or chambers of estates.

The lefties say this because Hitler dissolved the Weimar Republic's unions and consolidated them into the German equivalent of the AFL-CIO, basing the unions on socialist equality principles. Yes, he dissolved the unions. But he only did so because they weren't "union" enough.

The lefties claiming otherwise are ignorant of history.

It might shock Sherrod Brown, who shows no signs of being familiar at all with history, that the Nazis also supported universal healthcare, expanded animal welfare laws, support of healthy, organic foods and vegetarianism, a minimum wage, progressive taxation, and tight gun control — policies Sherrod Brown supports too.

In fact, former Senator Chris Dodd's father Thomas, is frequently accused by Jewish groups of drafting the Gun Control Act of 1968 from reading the Nazis' German Weapons Law. A signification portion of Dodd's law mirrors Hitler's law, including the "sporting purpose test" first introduced by the Nazis.

Likewise, Stalin did not shutdown unions, but made them agents of the state.

Just to re-emphasize, the Nazis and Soviets loved labor unions. They loved them so much they made them part of the state apparatus.

Sherrod Brown is no more a Nazi than Jim DeMint or Scott Walker. But he is pretty ignorant of history.

The Incestuous World of American Politics

I get asked all the time why people are so cynical about politics. Here's a great example: Andrea Saul, who was Charlie Crist's communications director.

Here's one of her attacks on Marco Rubio:

"As the truth begins to surface about Speaker Rubio's double billing of taxpayers, lavish spending of Republican money, and, just today, excessive pork spending, no ad will be able to stop voters from seeing he is not who he claims to be. A Miami lobbyist, Speaker Rubio has proved he is just another typical politician who uses his public office for personal gain and only comes clean once caught. Floridians deserve a true steward of their hard-earned taxpayer dollars and a public servant who does the right thing, even when no one is looking."

Here is another attack on Marco Rubio from Andrea Saul:

A clear pattern is emerging in Speaker Rubio's unfortunate behavior. The lobbyist-politician whines and plays the victim while continuing to make every effort to hide the facts surrounding his personal financial gain while in office.

Here is another attack on Rubio where Saul distorted his tax record — a distortion deemed false by even the liberals in the media.

Here is yet another Andrea Saul attack on Marco Rubio:

While Speaker Rubio claims he will not be co-opted by big government, his record as a Miami lobbyist while simultaneously serving in the legislature demonstrates he is willing to be co-opted by much worse

In October of 2009, Crist used the Florida GOP's credit card to fly Andrea Saul down to his campaign. On April 29, 2010, Charlie Crist became an independent candidate and Andrea Saul quit working for him.

Today, Mitt Romney hired her.

Romney, by the way, waited to endorse Rubio, until April 16, 2010, waiting until it became clear Crist was going to bolt the party.

And everyone will now sing kumbaya and carry on.

Morning Briefing for March 3, 2011

RedState Morning Briefing

For March 3, 2011

Go to www.RedStateMB.com to get
the Morning Briefing every morning at no charge.

1. The Passion Deficit

2. A Note to Labor Secretary Solis: Collective Bargaining Has No Place in Government

3. Secretary Chu's Insidious Economics of Energy

4. Collective bargaining reform passes Ohio Senate.

5. Eminent domain in Texas: still work to be done.

———————————————————————-

1. The Passion Deficit

Now comes news that House Republican Leader Eric Cantor (R.-Va.) is refusing to commit that the Pence amendment to defund Planned Parenthood will be in the final version of the bill which will fund the government for the rest of the year -– the "long-term continuing resolution."

This, despite the fact that Planned Parenthood, which performs 324,000 abortions a year, could, according to some insiders, collapse if denied the $350 million it annually receives in taxpayer dollars.

So, given a Schindler's list with 324,000 names, why would anyone who believes the unborn are human beings not move heaven and earth to protect them?

Said Cantor: "…we're trying to demonstrate right now that we don't want to see a [government] shutdown…"

Really!

In fact, the House had, weeks earlier, passed its version of a resolution to fund the government through the remainder of the fiscal year –- until September 30, 2011. If government funding is not yet guaranteed -– if a shutdown has not been rendered impossible — it is because Harry Reid and Barack Obama refuse to consider the House's resolution because it contains provisions unacceptable to them, such as defunding ObamaCare.

But hold on a minute: Cantor and his colleagues campaigned on the promise that they would repeal ObamaCare –- or at least defund it.

And, if the criterion of Cantor, House Speaker John Boehner, and Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell is the avoidance of any issue that will trigger an Obama veto, then they have raised the white flag before the battle has even begun.

Please click here for the rest of the post.

2. A Note to Labor Secretary Solis: Collective Bargaining Has No Place in Government

This past weekend, when ethically-challenged U.S. Secretary Hilda Solis told a cheering DNC crowd that "the fight is on" (referring to the Battle of Wisconsin) she openly declared her devotion to union bosses, as well as her disdain for the 88% of Americans who are union-free and stuck with the tab. Though it shouldn't be a surprise as Solis was a board member of the American Rights at Work—the union "shadow group" mouthpiece pushing the hallucinogenically-named Employee Free Choice Act—while she served in Congress, such a blatant provocation on behalf of a particular constituency from an official in a cabinet-level position is a good reminder of just how far America has fallen.

Please click here for the rest of the post.

3. Secretary Chu's Insidious Economics of Energy

Yesterday, Energy Secretary Steven Chu reiterated his insouciance to the plight of the American consumer of oil and gas. Chu told members of the Senate Budget Committee that there is no need to tap into the Strategic Petroleum Reserves because it will be corrected by spare world oil capacity:

"we have spare capacity, we expect naturally that the market forces will take care of this." "But we are concerned and we will watch it very carefully."

Well, it is nice to know that Chu actually has faith in the free market. It is just a shame that the market of "spare capacity" is controlled by Saudi Arabia and not our own energy production- thanks to Chu and his boss. Imagine if George Bush had refused to release the Strategic Petroleum Reserves in 2006 out of deference to the market forces.

Please click here for the rest of the post.

4. Collective bargaining reform passes Ohio Senate.

The bill is SB5, and it will limit future collective bargaining for Ohio state employees to base salary: it passed the Ohio Senate with a one-vote margin (all hail the power of having a strong enough majority to allow you breathing room: elections matter, folks*). The bill now goes to the House, where the GOP has a 59-40 advantage: and a simple majority constitutes a quorum in the Ohio legislature, which means that the bill will likewise almost certainly pass there with sufficient margin to permit a defection or two. Governor Kasich will of course sign the bill once it is law.

Please click here for the rest of the post.

5. Eminent domain in Texas: still work to be done.

Texas seems to be at or near the top of about every major ranking of the states one can find: jobs created, Fortune 500 companies, attracting new business, and overall economic performance. We may even be the national leader in lawsuits against the federal government.

However, one area where Texas notoriously lags behind: the protection of private property rights.

Please click here for the rest of the post.

I'm on for Neal Boortz Today

I'm filling in for the Talkmaster, Neal Boortz, today. You can listen live at http://wsbradio.com and call in at 1-877-310-2011.

Consider this an open thread.

Morning Briefing for March 2, 2011

RedState Morning Briefing

For March 2, 2011

Go to www.RedStateMB.com to get
the Morning Briefing every morning at no charge.

1. Christians Now Considered Unfit For Foster Parenting

2. Greg Sargent Encourages Unions To Commit Violence Then Demands We Look At His Record on Palin and Arizona

3. Duplicative Programs Cost More than GOP Cuts

4. More Hackery at Politico Courtesy of Andy Barr

5. As The Saudi Tanks Roll To Bahrain

———————————————————————-

1. Christians Now Considered Unfit For Foster Parenting

Citing your values to overturn your values; that's precisely what a court in the UK has done. They've cited the values that the country was founded on — Judeo-Christian ones — to rule against holding to those values.

Please click here for the rest of the post.

2. Greg Sargent Encourages Unions To Commit Violence Then Demands We Look At His Record on Palin and Arizona

Greg Sargent is whining at the Washington Post, not that I pointed out his calls for union violence in Wisconsin, but that at the very end, after all was said and done, I besmirched his journalism.

Sargent says he went out of his way to not blame Sarah Palin for causing the violence in Arizona. Let's ignore Sargent's whining and instead look at his record.

Sargent wants us to ignore that when conservatives began defending Sarah Palin from those who blamed her, Greg Sargent himself wrote . . .

Please click here for the rest of the post.

3. Duplicative Programs Cost More than GOP Cuts

Yesterday, we dinged Senator Coburn for his involvement in the 'Gang of Six'. Today, we commend him for initiating a GAO report which exposes the contempt in which the statists view taxpayers.

Conservatives have always known that the promulgation of government programs was not conceived from some genuine conviction of Keynesian economics, or a professed concern for the recipients. Most government programs serve the function of a circuitous campaign financing operation for the Democrat Party. Taxpayer funds are expended indiscriminately for redistribution programs that create dependency and are administered by special interest groups. The dependency constituents are to reciprocate the taxpayer-funded favor by voting for Democrats, while the special interest groups are to recompense with campaign donations.

Please click here for the rest of the post.

4. More Hackery at Politico Courtesy of Andy Barr

After reading this ridiculous "gotcha" hit job by Politico's Andy Barr, let me tell you what I know.

During the course of an inteview on the Obama administration's record on protecting the border, Texas Governor Rick Perry referred to Juarez, Mexico as "the most dangerous city in America."
After speaking with an aide, Perry indicated (correctly) that Juarez is in fact in Mexico, not the United States.

That is it. Those are literally the only two pieces of factual information conveyed by Andy Barr's ridiculous story. Barr doesn't even have the basic journalistic decency to quote anything Perry said to the assembled reporters about the administration's border enforcement efforts. Just an arguable slip of the tongue by someone who - beyond the shadow of a reasonable doubt - knows exactly where Juarez is and the problems it poses for the jurisdiction for which he has been responsible for over a decade.

Please click here for the rest of the post.

5. As The Saudi Tanks Roll To Bahrain

Secretary of The Interior, Ken Salazar, has long advocated on behalf of the continued moratorium on drilling for oil in the Gulf of Mexico. He has argued that more time was needed to insure these operations could be done safely. He has questioned the wisdom of rushing back into drilling before the completion of advanced research on ocean containment technology designed to mitigate the impact of future spill events similar to what befell British Petroleum earlier in President Obama's administration.

Others less sympathetic to Salazar's environmental concerns point to statements by President Obama and Energy Secretary Chu that indicate that both men believe that America would be a better country if gasoline would just cost more. These regrettable statements have now come back to haunt the Obama Administration.

Please click here for the rest of the post.

Greg Sargent Encourages Unions To Commit Violence Then Demands We Look At His Record on Palin and Arizona

UPDATE: Sargent just took to Twitter and called my quoting him directly "comical lies." That seems to be a rather damning indictment of Greg Sargent about his own writing.

———————

Greg Sargent is whining at the Washington Post, not that I pointed out his calls for union violence in Wisconsin, but that at the very end, after all was said and done, I besmirched his journalism by writing this:

I believe Sargent was being sarcastic. The problem is that if I or Sarah Palin or anyone on the right had said something similar, Greg Sargent and his friends would never, ever extend us the courtesy of recognizing the sarcasm, etc. If you need proof, just dig around for Sargent's writings about Sarah Palin's target map.

Sargent says he went out of his way to not blame Sarah Palin for causing the violence in Arizona. Let's ignore Sargent's whining and instead look at his record.

Sargent wants us to ignore that when conservatives began defending Sarah Palin from those who blamed her, Greg Sargent himself wrote:

Conservatives push back: The rundown on why it's supposedly unfair to tie the shooting to Sarah Palin's now-infamous Dem/crosshairs map.

It is "supposedly" unfair to tie Palin and her map to the shooting. If Sargent has issues with me and his nuance, consider Sargent taking issue with Sarah Palin and her use of the word "purport." Again, what's good for the goose . . . .

But wait. There's more!

Further, Sargent leaves out that he willfully hyped Sarah Palin's defense against those accusations as if she had never been attacked and still managed to conclude his piece by implying that, in fact, her "incendiary rhetoric" had "potential consequences."

Right here he distorts her video message to claim she said those "expressing concern and outrage about the shooting [were acting] in bad faith". Actually, what she was saying is that Greg's friends who were accusing her of instigating the attack on Giffords were acting in bad faith.

He must have missed that context.

Likewise, I guess Sargent missed the line where he says critics wanted Palin to "be more mindful of the potential consequences of incendiary rhetoric". Those "potential consequences" I guess — since Sargent clearly is now saying he never blamed Palin in any way for what happened — have nothing to do with anything that actually happened.

Oh . . . right . . . that's just what the "critics" are saying, not Sargent.

The irony here is that Sargent, back in 2010, denied that people on the left do what they accuse Andrew Breitbart of doing. In Sargent's words:

if by "it" we mean purveying information to readers or viewers that's designed only to achieve a political objective, with no effort whatsoever to ascertain its accuracy, true significance, or context, then the answer is: No, both sides don't do it.

Really?

Sargent used his Washington Post platform to go after both the highly regarded Thomas Sowell and Sarah Palin for comparing Barack Obama to Adolf Hitler — something neither of them did. Sowell's column highlighted governments' use of crises to expand government power. It also included a reference to Franklin Roosevelt. Sargent did not ask if Palin and Sowell were comparing Obama to FDR, just Hitler.

He also asked last year if there was a "Sarah Palin vileness/absurdity threshold". Why? Because Joe McGinniss decided to stalk the Palin family, moving in next door to the Palin family in Alaska to write a book on her.

Sargent did not like that Palin was, to say the least, concerned. Again, why should we on the right give Sargent the benefit of the doubt that he was being "sarcastic" in his calls for union violence when he has a long history of never giving anyone on the right — especially Sarah Palin — the benefit of any doubt.

In fact, Greg Sargent has a history of using his Washington Post perch to serve as an in house mouthpiece for the Democrat's spin and hackery.

He's now reached the pinnacle of it by encouraging unions to commit violence in Wisconsin. But he was just being sarcastic.

Greg Sargent wants me to correct what I've written? He might want to correct himself first.

The Non-Conspiracy

"These people are not fools. They want a world where we all live in big cities and use the sun and wind to run our lives — a return to the 14th century with 21st century hygiene."

It is not a conspiracy. Some of you think it is. It is not. A conspiracy is a secret plot by two or more people to do something harmful. What Barack Obama is doing is no conspiracy — it is not secret. Harmful, yes. Secret, no. In fact, the administration is pretty open about it.

I'm talking, of course, about high-speed rail. High-speed rail is the reason Barack Obama couldn't care less about what is going on in the Middle East. High-speed rail is the reason Barack Obama is perfectly willing to let us descend into a Carter Era energy crisis. High-speed rail is the reason Barack Obama does not want us to "drill here, drill now."

It's not a conspiracy. The facts are everywhere. Jay Hakes, who was in charge of the Energy Information Administration under Bill Clinton, is quoted in the Wall Street Journal saying, "There's no way we can create a better future without the price of [fossil-fuel-based] energy going up." Barack Obama's own Energy Secretary, Steven Chu, has said, "Somehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe."

Think about this. When George Bush was President and gas prices climbed over $3.00 a gallon, what did the left do? They screamed for President Bush to withdraw oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. They screamed that Congress should cut the gas tax.

The Left has not done that at all with Barack Obama in the White House.

It is easily attributable to partisanship, except I don't believe it is. With George Bush, the left knew he would never go for electric cars and high-speed trains to nowhere. So they could capitalize on the politics of the situation.

With Barack Obama, the Left knows he will pursue their agenda. So there is no push to release oil reserves or lower gas taxes, which will be used to fund high-speed rail. No, instead the Left wants accelerated restrictions on drilling for oil and more rapid expansion of the government funded green energy sector.

High-speed rail, of course, is the central component in the "greening" of America. There is no justification for high-speed rail in America. Even the not-exactly-conservative Washington Post is willing to admit we lack two things needed for high-speed rail to work effectively in the United States: high gas prices and high population density.

Now the Left has set about resolving those two issues: implementing policies to raise gas prices and increase urban density.

Friends, Barack Obama is making sure this energy crisis largely of his own creation is not going to waste. He wants fundamental change.

To make it all seem viable, the Left needs two things to happen.

Gas prices must increase to around $5.00 a gallon. That is, at least, the much talked about figure where suddenly high-speed rail seems like a great alternative to flight and driving. But population density must also increase.

To get a higher population density you need to get people out of their cars. So raise gas prices and put them in battery powered cars. Then they can't drive more than 40 miles without plugging in. It gives people incentive to move closer to their job. It increases population density.

These people are not fools. They want a world where we all live in big cities and use the sun and wind to run our lives — a return to the 14th century with 21st century hygiene. To get that to happen, gas prices must go up.

Barack Obama does not care about what is happening in the Middle East. He does not care about the cost to you to fill up your car with gas. Because the more you pay through Mid-East turmoil and inaccessible American oil deposits, the sooner his future of coal powered cars and high-speed trains can arrive.

This is an Obama created crisis he wants to make sure does not get wasted.