…$1.87 a gallon premium.

If George W. Bush is really out to take my last dollar away from me at the gas pump, to give to his oil buddies…like people say…he must be just as incompetent as everybody says.

A “change” from this means what?

Guess we’ll find out next year.

…as We can’t drill our way out of this problem.

1. The bank account is about to be overdrawn. We can’t deposit our way out of this problem.
2. Your bedroom is a mess. You can’t tidy up your way out of this problem.
3. I’m hungry. I can’t eat my way out of this problem.
4. We’re out of food. We can’t go grocery shopping our way out of this problem.
5. We are disgusting, fat tubs of goo. We can’t exercise our way out of this problem.
6. I’m here, and the place I need to get to is over there. I can’t drive my way out of this problem.
7. You stink. You can’t shower your way out of this problem.
8. You’re about to wet your pants. You can’t excuse yourself to the bathroom and urinate your way out of this problem.
9. The boss is ticked at you for not finishing your assignment. You can’t work your way out of this problem.
10. I am thirsty and I just emptied my beer. I can’t fetch a beer my way out of this problem.

After #10, I think, the point’s been made; this is just code for not doing anything about anything. If there’s been any humor-value to this exercise at all, it’s been spent. But believe me: I could do this all day if I wanted to. Pick a number, and I could meet it.

However, I do not wish to denigrate this “We can’t xxxxx our way out of this problem” template. It isn’t completely worthless. I can think of two places where it makes complete sense:

– The United States has become a nation of whiners, and we can’t socialize our way out of this problem.
– Our government has a budget deficit and it can’t tax its way out of this problem.

Those two work, I think.

Seriously. Remember a few years ago when you set up that parent, grandparent, or dotty old aunt with e-mail, and your reward for that was this huge avalanche of “don’t drive with you headlights off” or “Good Times Virus” or “this guy woke up in a bathtub full of ice with his kidneys missing”? Remember that?

All of those made more sense than we can’t drill our way out of this problem. Each and every single one.

W.C.D.O.W.O.O.T.P. almost sounded like it made sense the first time it was used. Then someone, somewhere, said “waitaminnit…drilling is how it works…that’s where you get it.” The second time it was used, it looked like what it was, a stupid catchphrase designed to get democrats elected so they could do even more damage than they already have.

By the third time it was used, it was a badge of dishonor for whoever said it; by the fourth, it was a badge of dishonor for whoever heard it and took it seriously. Kind of like the guy who believed the weird old aunt about the kidney guy.

Then, they said it some more, at least twenty more times. And they’re still going.

Kudlow in National Review, via Gerard.

This head swings toward Speaker Nan and the House democrats. Hello? What’ve you guys done for us lately?

Can’t wait to see your kind running everything. Hopenchange!

Phil got a letter back from his democrat Senator. The subject was drilling for oil stateside, and the text of the reply was predictably boilerplate.

Combined, oil and gas companies hold leases to nearly 68 million acres of federal land that they’re not using both in Alaska and in the Gulf. This is over 80% of available federal land and the federal government provides these leases at a discount. Congress needs to pass legislation that would force oil companies to fully utilize these existing areas which contain some of the most abundant supply of oil in this country. It only makes sense that they explore and develop the millions of acres they already have access to before Congress permits drilling in new areas.

Energy experts contend opening new areas like the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge would not lower prices at the pump for years and then only by a few cents. Additionally, it would fail to move the country toward energy independence. With only 3 percent of the world’s oil supply and 25 percent of the world’s demand, it is clear America can not drill its way to lower prices. Our country instead needs real solutions to the energy crisis.

I’ve seen the 68 million acres addressed in a lot of different places, but the best analysis that came to my attention was the one you can find here. To bottom-line it, looking for oil works pretty much the way you’d expect it to. You could buy land, hoping you’ll find some oil there but that would be ridiculously expensive. So the companies lease the tracts on a massive scale, presumably at a lower rate, for the purpose of exploration. If they find some oil, they have to take out a different lease in order to actually produce.

So there is just a smidgen of truth in each sentence. Nothing more, nothing less. The leases are provided “at a discount,” in the sense that it makes good business sense for both sides to sign exploration leases at one rate, and production leases at another.

The thing about 25 percent of the world’s demand and 3 percent of the world’s supply, is another interesting little canard. I’m not exactly sure how I’m supposed to interpret that sentence, and that’s probably by the design of whoever wrote it. Evidently we’re providing 3 percent of the world’s supply of oil but we’re creating a quarter of the demand, so we have to import whatever we’re using that we can’t pull out of the ground here. I do not know if “3 percent of the world’s supply” means we’re already pulling that 3 percent out of the ground as things stand now, or we’d be supplying that much if we were using the 68 million acres the way democrats say we should be using them. Since the 68 million acres is just a big ol’ snow job, and a fairly obvious one at that, I don’t suppose it very much matters. As Phil says, “I assume the allusion to accounting for 25% of the world’s demand and 3% of the world’s population is hinting at some sort of moral assessment of whether or not that should be so.” Hard to say; they aren’t really going anywhere with this thought, except to say we “can not drill [our] way to lower prices.”

Allowing all else the benefit of the doubt, the logic still seems fuzzy to me. We are providing 3% of the world’s oil. Congress lays the smackdown and says, you dirty rotten creepy jerks (DRCJ) in the oil industry better use those 68 million acres or we’re gonna take ’em away! The DRCJ’s get together and say omigosh, Congress is really getting tough on us. Darn those noble democrats and that strong-willed woman with the gavel, Nancy Pelosi! Oh well, we know when we’ve lost a battle. So they start pulling more oil out of the ground — now we’re providing 4% or 5% or 6% of the world’s oil. Yay, democrat Congress!

Well…now we have more oil. We import a little bit less…or we don’t import less…whatever. Clearly, oil would become somewhat more of a domestic product, and less of an imported one. Prices would then come down, because they would have to. The trade balance would benefit. And/or, the oil reserves. Supply and demand.

I think Phil is right; there was supposed to be some “bash America” talking point stuck in the boilerplate, something someone wanted stuck in. Oh, that stupid piggyish America, guzzling more than her fair share of yet another precious resource. Well, it must not have been coordinated too well because they didn’t take that thought anywhere. I doubt I can find a plurality of democrats anywhere, who can provide to me one single coherent explanation of how this is supposed to work — how drilling more fails to lead to lower prices because we’re consuming 25 and supplying 3.

In the end…it’s just yet another example of a simple matter being made needlessly complex. We’re restricting ourselves from drilling for our own oil reserves, importing like mad, paying through the nose. We’re being sold a big ol’ bill-o-goods about caribou and fuzzy baby polar bears shivering to death because of our selfish oil exploration, a tiny minority of us are buying those bullshit stories, and so the status quo endures even though it does nothing to help us and everything to hurt us.

Drill here, drill now.

Katy Grimes, who is sidebar resource Fetching Jen…miss her, you’re missing more than you think you are. Wonderful blogger, especially since she’s local — she and I share an area code, but not a zip. Blogging on Townhall, she writes:

While the Senate lost just this morning (51-43) on their attempt to tax “windfall oil profits,” Democrat Rep. Maxine Waters already threatened to “socialize” the oil industry (I think she meant to say “nationalized”). Watch the Fox news clip of Waters actually threatening to take over oil companies (sounds like hugo Chavez) here.

Then there is Dick Durbin demonizing profits: “The oil companies need to know that there is a limit on how much profit they can take in this economy,” said Sen. Richard Durbin of Illinois, the Senate’s No. 2 Democrat, warning that if energy prices are not reined in “we’re going to find ourselves in a deep recession.”

Thank God they lost this vote. What industry will be their target next? Farming is already heavily subsidized, but not yet nationalized. Look out Apple and Microsoft: your “obs[c]ene profits” are a big target.

Brings to mind an old family argument within the generation more senior that I used to witness from the sidelines: The uncle that just died, I vividly remember him asking me in exasperation “What in the world is the matter with your father? Doesn’t he understand that he’s poor?” The incredulous reaction was inspired by my Dad, actually his entire half of the family tree, showing reluctance to support these Roosevelt-progressive “gettin’-even-with’em-ism” programs and policies.

I’ve never exactly been in high cotton, myself; things are a little leaner now, than they have been before. But to me, it seems natural the oil companies should be making higher profits, now, when gasoline is more expensive. Isn’t this to be expected? They’re providing us with a commodity that, both before & after we get our claws on it, we prize more highly than we did before. While they’re bringing it up out of the ground, while they’re trucking it around, during the refinement of it, more things can go wrong when it’s worth more money. By “more” things, I mean a higher dollars’-worth of things…which is the only measurement that really matters.

To say nothing of the fact that when they’re moving it around, they’re burning their very own product. Look closely at a gas tanker sometime. There’s some littler tanks on the side, up by the cab, right? That’s where the diesel fuel goes. The gas in the big tank survives the trip, but the diesel gets burned up moving the gas around. Said diesel gets more expensive when the gas gets more expensive. Duh.

So if things happen to go peachy and there’s a profit to be made…yeah, I expect that would go up. This is why kids put up lemonade stands when it gets hotter outside. When there’s a profit to be made from the selling of it — when we value it more.

One other thing: We’ve quibbled about gas prices and “windfall profits” pretty much every Memorial Day, when there’s a new ceiling being ruptured in the average per-gallon self-serve gas price in the country. We’ve always done this — but not, in my memory, to this kind of intensity. Not this kind of viciousness.

Before Labor Day, I expect the crude oil price might come down again…the gas price probably will not. The snarking from the socialists who call themselves democrats, probably won’t die down even as it overheats the very machinery that is tasked with spewing it at us.

I think we’ll see a meltdown. And that is why I watch this with intense interest.

I mean, how much longer can this go on, where the man in the street is NOT yet saying “waitaminnit…duh…these ‘conservative’ guys, er, that’s a good point. You charge them evil awful oil guys more tax money and this somehow results in me paying a lower price at the pump, how does that work again??”

At some point, that question has to get answered. When enough people are asking about it.

Some clever satire would get that first domino tipping over, wouldn’t it? Like a late night comedy show where some evil oil executive is reviewing the corporate tax bill and saying “Good God! We’d better cut our prices in half so Congress stops making our lives more miserable!” I think that, with a heavy coating of sarcasm, might be all it takes to get the gears turning.

Companies do not reduce prices of their products when their costs go up. And you don’t need an advanced economics degree to get that. Third-grade math is enough.

Thing I Know #230. We’d call them “rationalists” if they thought things through rationally; that’s why they’re called “socialists.”