Did you call the president like I told you? I know some of you did because you called the station and asked again for the number. Get a pen and paper because I’m going to give the number out again.
If you missed last week, I urged everyone to call the White House and urge the president to exercise his constitutional authority to call the Congress back to Washington from the August recess and put them to work on, among other things, debating and voting on legislation aimed at increasing domestic supplies of energy and thus giving all of us some relief from the crippling price we’re paying at the pump and elsewhere.
I said all of this last Friday during this very slot. What I did not know while we were on the air was that the subject of energy was in the process of coming to a head on the House floor at very nearly that same moment.
A significant number of Democrats have crossed the aisle and are joining Republicans in support of a piece of legislation called the “American Energy Act.” According to its proponents in Congress it’s a kind of an “all-of-the-above” bill aimed at increasing domestic oil drilling, increasing funding for research on alternative energies and providing common-sense initiatives regarding conservation.
Democrats are crossing the aisle to support the bill because they have ears and they want to keep their jobs. And with their ears they’re hearing loud and clear from their constituents that opposing drilling offshore and in ANWR and in the western shale was one thing when gas was $2.10 a gallon. It’s something entirely different as you approach four bucks.
So last Friday morning, the Republicans were gaining ground when Speaker Nancy Pelosi, sensing that she couldn’t afford to allow a full day of discussion on the American Energy Act to take place in front of the C-SPAN cameras, abruptly adjourned the House, killed the C-SPAN feed and turned off the lights in the House chamber.
Here’s how it sounded. Click here to listen.
With that, Congress went on vacation.
Except not entirely. A group of Republicans has either remained in Washington or returned to Washington and they’re on the House floor every day, speaking to tour groups in the gallery and whatever media is in the chamber on the subject of America’s energy needs. About 20 or 25 are on hand on any given day. About a hundred in total have taken part. One of those who is back in Washington is Louie Gohmert, our congressman from Tyler.
I spoke with Louie yesterday and he tells me that the House gallery has been full of ordinary citizens who are openly expressing their appreciation of the fact that someone in Washington is willing to suffer the suffocating heat and forego a vacation to stay there to fight for them, however symbolic the fight may be.
Hats of to Louie and his colleagues.
This piece is not about energy per se. It’s about arrogance.
If Nancy Pelosi truly believes that her approach to our energy problems is the right one, she should welcome an open debate and an up or down vote. Debating and voting is what we pay Congress to do.
Instead, Nancy Pelosi turns off the lights. This is the woman who, upon being elected Speaker of the House, promised the most open Congress in history and stated her belief that generally, all bills should come to the floor for fair and open debate and with an amendment process that offers the minority the chance to offer alternatives.
Congressmen are supposed to do two things. Debate and vote. The Speaker of the House, on one of the most pressing issues in a generation, is allowing neither.
The president needs to call her out by exercising his authority to re-convene the Congress. The number to call to urge him to do so is 202-456-1111.
In a country of 300 million, one person can be safely ignored. But when we all speak at once, even the most arrogant of politicians has no choice but to listen.
The dust has not even settled and already the Dimz are demanding a stimulus deal for those “who are losing their shirts”. Put another way, the foxes demand that they who left the hen house when the heat forced them (Reed,Pelosi)to leave the place they burned down with their own hands, now want to be re-imbursed for their efforts.
On another note, where is Louie Gohmert when you need him? He and other Texans should have stayed in Washington and demanded that the real reason for all our economic woes, (lack of energy at prices that won’t bankrupt us at the pump)must be addressed now.
Not everyone spends all their hard earned cash (in my case, ANY of it) gambling on the stockmarket or in real estate ventures. But everyone has to get to work and drives a car to do so. Until the Dimz manage to drive us back into the ‘daze’ of rickshaws and worn shoe leather, (which is the illogical conclusion of false profits like Al Gore if his insanity of carbon off-sets are followed) we are going to have to start taking responcibility for our own energy needs. Wearing beany caps and rubbing up and down on a tree to make static, dot.com electricity won’t work. Nor will windmills T. Boone, your company (which will make gazillions if this ‘altruistic’ plan you’ve invested millions in radio and tv ads is followed)notwithstanding.
To quote Al Davis (sort of) “Just drill, baby!”
Since it looks like we will be blackmailed into helping out venal Dimz and gullible sheep, Louie should atleast be willing to fall on his sword for the compromise concession to the rest of this nation which is sick and tired of hearing that since ANWAR won’t supply all our needs right now, therefore don’t drill at all…just keep stickin our head in the sand.
Paul, maybe a little reminder from your bully pulpit would wake our man from Tyler up and help him to see that maybe he was elected “for just such a time as this”. Why wait for Bainerd from Ohio to get his act together…we need leadership now, this week in fact before the chance to work with the suddenly “bi-partisan” Dimz passes. If the Dimz get to race bait and do bear raids on Bears and Stearns and Lehman Bros with impunity, then the rest of us get to drill to our hearts content wherever we want, and the freakin’ pantheists can just go to the Lake of Fire. I demand separation of the pagan enviornmental tree hugger’s worship of the creation (instead of the Creator) from their demand to run the state of affairs in this nation. Separation of their church from our state!~))
Hell, if it was me, I’d hang this energy issue and the fact that the Congressional Black Caucus race-baited the nation into all these stupid loans that we now must pay back—I’d hang it around the Dimz neck like a millstone and throw them into the deepest sea…or atleast until after the elections!!! Where is the courage to fight these traitors amoung our elected officials?
On another more solemn note, but of equal importance,(and I close), the International Christian Embassy Jerusalem, founded in 1980,
asked me to pass on their call to the body of Christ world wide to pray and fast each Tuesday until the November 4 election for the United States of America. My wife, who teaches high school English at Grace Community in Tyler will pass the word on there like I have just done with you.
PS When I called, Larry said to reference him as per this note to you. I have harassed him from Amy Glenn to Roger Gray…Glenn Beck has gotten him off my hook…(:~))
Mr. Gleiser;
Will we NEVER finish paying for the Civil War? I am just a lowly land surveyor here in East Texas, but this latest attempt at “Leveling the playing field” may just do this country in. The government was hell bent on everyone owning a home. Sounds great but the cruel hard facts are that many do not deserve home ownership and will not pay the mortgage. Making home loans without income verification or even a job is shear insanity. The steps that I and millons have gone through for the last hundred years is now seen as racist. All this bad paper to quote Mr. Wright “has come home to roost.” This ever expanding welfare state is something we can no longer afford. Now Barney (ears pulled forward) Frank says that these deadbeats must be allowed to stay in their homes. If these people were not intelligent enough to understand what they were signing, should not this tell us something? It seems more everyday that common sense has absolutely left the building. How in the world can investors, and as will come as news to Democrats, be expected to risk money for mortgages and everything else without assurance their money will be repayed?