Today’s presidential press conference was equally enlightening as to what’s really going on in this country. As if we didn’t know it all the time, it was refreshing to hear the President finally admit to who and what was causing our current economic woes…Congress! Congress, it seems, has not permitted oil exploration in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) in Alaska, resulting in our high fuel prices and likely contributing to the collapse of the housing market, Taliban resurgences in Afghanistan, and the high price of rice. In addition, Congress has selfishly considered enacting restraints on Greenhouse Gas emissions, further damaging the frail and barely thriving oil companies. Why? They must have a thing for glacier preservation, penguins or snow cones. For shame!

But, having he reviewed and analyzed the “facts” the President indicated not only had he had come to opposite conclusions of federal and private economists, scientists and other world leaders, he could fix things in a heartbeat. What is even more telling is that simultaneously, Dick Little, columnist for the Paradise Post, ardent supporter of President Bush and all his policies, and antagonist of anything that is done to protect the environment or keep the rich from becoming richer, came to exactly the same conclusion. So, when two outstanding minds -- one national and one local -- conclude that our failure to drill in ANWR is the crux of our recession, it obviously must be true.

The problem is that most of us are not astute enough to review the facts and read between the lines as can these two intellectuals, thus our conclusions are faulty and often vastly different from theirs. Even those professionals employed by our government and responsible for analysis of these issues continually mess things up and it has taken Bush and Little to effectively analyze the situation. Case-in-point: In a report published by the Energy Information Administration (EIA), a branch of the U.S. Energy Department in 2004 it was concluded that “The opening of the ANWR 1002 Area to oil and gas development is projected to increase domestic oil production starting in 2013. In 2025, the coastal plain of ANWR is projected to reach 0.9 million barrels per day under the USGS mean oil resource case, and 0.6 and 1.6 million barrels per day under the low and high resource cases, respectively.” So, using this available (but obviously faulty) government-generated data, we can easily see that with our current domestic oil use of 20.7 million barrels of oil/day (of which 10.1 billion barrels are imported), that adding ANWRs 0.9 billion barrels maximum output (that would not even begin for about 10 years and not reach maximum until 2029) would result in an expected price impact that “might reduce world oil prices by as much as 30 to 50 cents per barrel.” Now as there are 42 gallons of crude/barrel and that refines to 19.5 gallons of gas, we can expect a potential price drop of ($0.50/19.5) a whopping TWO CENTS A GALLON!

Wow, not only can we have an immediate effect in reducing the price of gas at the pump, increasing jobs, and eliminating home foreclosures, but with a windfall such as this we might go a long way to resolving world hunger. And, let’s quit worrying about the escalating releases of methane trapped in the melting arctic permafrost. According to the Arctic Council, the last methane “burp” 55 million years ago only caused “rapid warming and massive die-offs,” not nearly as the one 251 million years ago that “came close to wiping out all life on Earth.” Certainly this must be directly out of Grimm’s Fairy Tales.

Nope, let’s get with it and go after the black stuff -- all of it -- and use it up just as fast as we possibly can. As should now be obvious, science-based estimates and figures are always wrong. Since both Bush and Little have either an apparent supernatural ability to foretell the future or a direct contact with their creator on the “real facts,” why aren’t we all following them like a herd of sheep? Could it be it is because…THEY’RE IDIOTS?