IMMIGRATION SURGE
Re: The Washington Prowler’s News Flash! A New Number 2?:

Let me see if I have this right. The AP does a poll this week on Republican candidates for POTUS. Romney, who has been a very distant number three among declared candidates, has ascended to number two ahead of McCain. Have I got it so far? The AP declares that “some GOPers are in for a surprise.”

Now has anything been going on in the past 7 to 10 days besides the Romney ad campaign? Why yes, I believe that a fight has broken out on the right over the Bush-Kennedy Amnesty Bill in the Senate. Mr. McCain was prominent in the group of bipartisan Senators negotiating the lipsticked pig behind closed doors. Mr. Bush has questioned whether his conservative base wants what is good for America. Senator Graham has risen to tell “the bigots to shut up.” Senator McCain has gotten into an obscenity laced shouting match with another GOP Senator who does NOT support the bill. Senator McCain has been everywhere touting his support of the bill. BUT, Mr. Romney has found many places and formats to trumpet his disagreement and opposition to this bad bill.

Gee, I wonder if any of that illegal amnesty bill stuff could have had any affect on lifting Romney over McCain among GOP voters. Hmmmmmmn…
— Ken Shreve
New Hampshire
P.S. Fred Thompson is also against the Bush-Kennedy bill.

ENERGETIC RESPONSES
Re: R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr.’s Oil Is Not Well:

As long as the politicians, oil companies, and environmentalists keep the U.S. hamstrung in the production of energy in this country, the American people will continue to pay through the nose.

France generates over 70 percent of its electricity through the use of nuclear power. We have the capacity, but not the will, to do the same.

We have enough coal in Wyoming to satisfy our power needs for hundreds of years, but not the will to use it. Instead, we ship it overseas. There are huge low-sulphur coal deposits locked up in the Escalante National Monument, placed off-limits to development by Bill Clinton, as a payoff to Indonesian contributors to his reelection campaign.

We can’t drill for oil in ANWR, because of opposition by the wacko environmentalists. We won’t know how much oil there is there until we drill.

We can’t drill for oil in the eastern Gulf of Mexico, because Florida politicians balk, and then arrange payoffs from their friends for those willing to side with them.

There are an estimated four trillion barrels of oil locked up in shale in the U.S. Rocky Mountains. Shell Oil has developed a viable method of extracting in place. Of course, first they have to have the permission of the government to go ahead….

On an on, we flirt with alternate fuel sources, such as biodiesel, and ethanol (a net energy loser in production), while we pay ever higher prices at the pump.

We are all sheep, afraid to kick out our current totally corrupt government and start over.
— R. Goodson
Vero Beach, Florida

It was inevitable that the biggest oil producers are unstable, underdeveloped countries. The United States developed the oil and auto industries. The black goop wasn’t worth anything before that. That’s why we consume more and started running out first. The poorly governed, backward countries that still have oil mostly didn’t find it or develop it.
— D.M. Duggan

Concerning your article:

* 200 years ago an engine running on the components of water was demonstrated.

* 111 years ago a U.S. Patent, 603,058, was awarded for a device that separate the elements of water for use as fuel.

* 77 years ago the President of General Motors predicted 80-mpg by 1939.

* 70 years ago Ford Motor Co. tested a 170-mpg Pogue carburetor.

* 33 years ago Shell Oil Co demonstrated a 376-mpg automobile.

* 29 years ago a 100-mpg Ford V-8 was demonstrated.

* 23 years ago Peugeot advertised a 72-mpg @ 56-mph Diesel.

* 4 years ago an English newspaper article announced a 104-mpg Toyota Diesel and 94-mpg VW/Audi Diesels.

* 2 years ago the governor of Alaska said there is enough oil on the North Slope to last the USA 200 years.

* Last year a chairman of ExxonMobil said Peak Oil theories wrong.

* Commercial fuel cell vehicles have been available in Europe for years.

Some documentation for the above is attached, visit my website for the remainder.

Also on my web page, in #12, are videos of different vehicles using the components of water for fuel. These are not fuel cell powered vehicles with electric motors or are they fueled from a source external to the vehicle. The engines in these vehicles are conventional internal combustion engines running on the components of water. A device connected to a tank of water supplies fuel to the engine. One inventor has been running engines on water for over 30-years.

Obviously, an engine can run on the components of water, so can a furnace, stove and electric generator.
Many politicians and media were informed of the above, they will do nothing to reduce America’s dependence on imported oil.
— Byron Wine

Dear Mr. Tyrrell, you must be cracking up. We produce more than 5%. Plus there is plenty more we could get in Alaska, Colorado/Utah/Wyoming area, off of Flordia/California/Texas. Our problem is liberals/environmentalists.

2. Ethanol costs more and is less fuel efficient. Also, it has already gone up with the little amount of extra we have started to use. Mexico loves that. And we can only grow so much corn and sugar, unless someone wants dust bowl II.

3. I like the nuclear energy idea. It is too bad too many people are blind to the safe usage and clean air it saves.

4. The price would not be so high if the despots who have it were not trying to increase the price by constantly running off with the mouth or starting wars. Alternatives are nice. But we need less expensive and reusable fuel answers.
— Joseph D’Ambrosia

KNOW WHEN TO FOLD ‘EM
Re: Jeffrey Lord’s A Legacy of Losing:

Republican presidents have been known to “cut and run.” After the Marine barracks were bombed in Beirut in 1983, President Reagan withdrew troops from Lebanon. Was this cutting and running? One could argue that our continued presence could have monitored and curtailed terrorist activity in the region, thus keeping terrorism from spreading like a cancer (and ending up on our shores on 9/11). However, Reagan was sensible enough to know that he had to concentrate on one front — the Cold War — and there was no public support for guerrilla war with terrorists in the Middle East.

Also, the first Bush exited Iraq prematurely, leaving Saddam in power. Was it prudence, or cowardice, or political calculation that led Bush to exit before toppling Saddam? Contrast Bush’s early exit with LBJ’s stubborn refusal to back down on Vietnam. It certainly wasn’t a Democrat who got us out of Vietnam.

Two of the greatest wars fought by the U.S., World War I and World War II, were run by Democratic presidents. Ex-president Theodore Roosevelt advocated immediate U.S. entry into the war, and even volunteered to lead his Rough Riders into Europe. President Wilson dragged his feet, and delayed U.S. entry for almost three years, thus saving countless American lives. Who was right, the bellicose TR or the cautious Wilson?

In addition, Carter didn’t lose because he wasn’t hawkish enough — he lost because the economy was in a free fall. George H.W. Bush lost his re-election bid, despite his hawkish record — and in spite of the collapse of the Soviet Union.

George W. Bush was re-elected partly because Homeland Security and the invasion of Afghanistan prevented another 9/11. But there’s no doubt that the Democratic gains in 2006 had a great deal to do with the Iraq War.

In sum, knowing when to stop in the face of a hopeless cause is not cowardice, it is prudence. Even the greatest military strategists in history, Napoleon and Alexander, were defeated because they didn’t know when to call it quits.
— Robert Ellis
Reno, Nevada

What does Mr. Lord say about the campaign of Dwight Eisenhower and the Korean War?
— Martha Francois
Portland, Oregon

RELIGIOUS TESTS
Re: Hunter Baker’s Huckabee, Darwin, and Democracy:

My, my, the secularists among us must be getting desperate. They now want to use a potential candidate’s belief about the origin of life as a litmus test for anyone seeking to be president of the United States. Failure to worship at the shrine of naturalism creates, in their minds, a serious question about the competency of anyone seeking such an important office. Visions of executive orders issued by such a person mandating the teaching of creation alongside of evolution is enough to reduce these folks to fits of apoplectic spasms.

This appears to be part of a disturbing trend in this country to marginalize any person whose life is defined by his or her strong religious convictions. The really smart people who say they believe that science and reason alone are sufficient to explain everything are convinced that only uneducated bumpkins believe stuff like the creation narrative of Genesis or in a God powerful enough to be the author of life. They prefer to put their faith in a theory that has yet to discover a process capable of producing a universe with the complexity we see all around us.

Instead, they choose to call the rest of us fanatics because we don’t accept the ideas they cling to with a religious fervor the envy of any true believer. I once heard a religious fanatic defined as anyone who is more religious than you. When it comes to belief in blind chance and random processes as the creating agents of our universe, these folks are far too religious for me. What if I thought one of them shouldn’t be President of the United States?
— Rick Arand
Lee’s Summit, Missouri

CREDIT WHERE IT’S DUE
Re: Brian S. Wesbury’s Abused and Depressed:

Thank you for Brian S. Wesbury’s review of Amity Schlaes’s The Forgotten Man. I can’t wait to read it. Brian writes, “Ludwig von Mises once said that a stable value for our money is as least as important as a constitution or a bill of rights. He probably said this after observing firsthand the things that Ms. Shlaes’s excellent research has uncovered.” Actually, Mises predicted the Great Depression in the 1920s based on the Austrian business cycle theory that excessive credit expansion creates the boom and the succeeding bust.

However, according to Wesbury, Schlaes writes, “For the working man, ‘deflation made it seem as though life were stacked against him.'” While fixed payments for mortgages and taxes would be difficult to pay if wages fell in step with prices, wages didn’t fall during the Depression. Those who had jobs should have felt no difficulty paying taxes and mortgages. Also, falling prices made those incomes worth even more. Adjusted for deflation, wages actually rose during the depression. But those inflexible wages also made it necessary for employers to shed workers and created massive unemployment.

Most economists are deathly afraid of deflation, but as Mises and Hayek demonstrate, prices will naturally fall at the same rate as production increases if the money supply remains fixed, and that will cause the wages of the working man to be worth more each year, instead of less as happens under inflation. Low, moderate inflation that lulls people to sleep hurts the working man far more than moderate deflation. After all, no one complains about the continuous deflation in the electronic and computer industries, and no one should complain about the fact that Wal-Mart has deflated the prices of food and clothing for millions of Americans who are humble enough to shop there.
— Roger D. McKinney
Broken Arrow, Oklahoma

TWENTY QUESTIONS
Before we get underway, I must make a small confession. I am 30 year old liberal Democrat, and AmSpec is my daily guilty pleasure. If I wanted an echo chamber, I’d make Kos my homepage. On with the show.

I’d like to ask a few questions to your contributing public. Yes, most of these questions will be somewhat sarcastic; but if sarcasm banned you from these pages there would be no page tomorrow. Plus, I’ll take a few jabs at the Ds and name-drop a few of my favorite contributors to this page. Deal?

1. Does it hurt doing all those back flips during your cheerleading routine for the war in Iraq?

2. For all the talk I hear about Bush Derangement Syndrome, doesn’t it surprise you that no righties were alive from 1992 to 2000?

3. After seeing them fight corruption with cold hard cash, shouldn’t you all be wishing that the next thing the Democrats decide to fight is cannibalism?

4. If I told you I was an East Coast born, private schooled elitist from an impressive business and political lineage and that my career interests included drilling for oil and owning a professional sports team, would you think of me as a good ‘ol boy?

5. Would you be mad if I said that the ’06 elections proved that you all have lost touch with those of us who live in the fly-to states?

6. How long do you think an out of shape, city raised, never even been camping guy like myself would last on Bev’s ranch?

7. Why is it never OK to question the service, integrity, character, or mental state of anyone who has ever worn a military uniform for this country… unless that person is an elected Democrat or John McCain?

8. P, C, and A: Could you at least give me a hint? It’s killing me.

9. Did you know that John Edwards could feed an entire village for as little as one haircut a day?

10. After (at the very least) six years of flogging moral values and Christianity, do you really think that the Republican Party will give its presidential nomination to a socially liberal adulterer or a Mormon?

11. Isn’t it scary that the best campaign strategy in recent history is “don’t show up for any debates”?

12. Do you think that Jay Molyneaux will ever tell us how he really feels about Democrats?

13. If I promise to think about voting for a Republican at some point in my life, do you think Mimi will mention me in a poem?

14. Did anybody get the number of that bus we threw Joe Lieberman under?

15. Do you think President Bush’s SoulVision device needs to be put in the shop?

16. Is the fact that I can’t find Canuckistan on a map directly related to the fact that I’m a public school graduate?

17. How much of The Man do you have to be to survive a heart attack, plot to become President of Earth, tell a Congressman to perform an anatomically impossible feat, and have someone apologize to you after you shoot them?

18. My work experience includes being a grocery store cashier, a bank teller, a fraud analyst, and a training coordinator; isn’t there some sort of government agency I can run?

19. Do you think Diane and ELAINE will be mad at me for making them read this far?

20. Finally: Do you realize that accusing someone of treason in effect means that you believe they should be executed?

Honestly, I love reading this page. Seriously. Like,
for real.
— Lee Lutz
What is apparently the People’s Republic of Maryland.
I didn’t see that on the ballot anywhere.