From http://bighollywood.breitbart.com/kschlichter/2009/07/04/the-force-is-with-sarah-palin (via Instapundit):

A “Star Wars” analogy:  Remember when Darth Vader faced off with Obi-Wan Kenobi?  “If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine.”  She’s now immune from bogus legal claims and her book will not only raise her profile but set up her family financially for life.  Now Sarah is unbound, freed from the need to be up in Juneau and able to network, fundraise and even (maybe) campaign without limitation.

Read the whole thing.

“If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine.”

Could be very interesting.

Nationalized health care is a great idea. We all need health care at one time or another. And it’s become so expensive that none of us can afford to pay for it – at least not after we pay for our housing, food, clothing, transportation, vacations, jewelry, college education, and taxes. I think the government taxpayers should pay for everybody’s health care. And since I don’t have much income I won’t have to pay for my health care; I’ll get it for free.

But let’s not stop at health care. There are many things more important than health care. We all need food, clothing, and housing. Houses are even more expensive than health care. If I can’t afford to pay for my health care, how could I possibly pay for my own housing? Part of the cost of houses is due to speculators and part is due to the profit that greedy construction companies make on something that everybody needs. I think the government should nationalize the housing industry; take over all construction companies so that nobody will have to pay the terribly high cost of houses.

We should copy some of the great ideas in the Health Care bill:

* Let’s give a government-appointed Housing Advisory Council the ability to determine a standardized house;
* Establish three tiers of standardized prices, as well as the total dollar value of furnishings relative to a national average;
* Mandate relative prices for people with different incomes;
* Give the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development authority to set a maximum percentage of administrative expenditures and profits for construction companies;
* Require plans to provide incentives for certain styles of housing; and
* Give State “Gateways” authority to redistribute resources among contractors to account for the income distribution of their customers.

And food is even more important than either health care or housing so let’s give the Secretary of Agriculture authority to decide what kinds of food we are allowed to eat – and how often we can have parties with more expensive kinds of food. And the government should also determine a standard size food portion for restaurants in order to fight obesity

We’ll have the Secretary of Transportation decide the mix of autos, bicycles, walking, buses, hitchhiking all around the country. Of course, more walking would be good for our health and more bicycling would be good for the environment. There would be great synergy in having the government decide all these things for us.

The Secretary of Energy will decide how much propane, electricity, oil, natural gas, nuclear, windmill, solar, hydroelectric each individual and business can consume. We’ll bring back ration cards to control the outrageous costs of energy.

And finally we’ll have the Departments of Education and Labor tell all of us what we’ll be trained to do and where we’ll work. Of course, we’ll have to reestablish the draft to make people become doctors after the government makes health care so unprofitable and bureaucratic that doctors leave the profession. And we’ll have to retrain everybody in the pharmaceutical industry because new medicines are just too expensive. We won’t use them because they contribute to the high cost of health care.

Just imagine all the ways government could improve all our lives! This could be the start of a brave new world.

Here’s a chart to show what I was saying in my earlier post. When Bush allowed offshore drilling, the price of oil fell and fell. When Obama banned offshore drilling, prices went up and up.

As gas prices rise, it’s very interesting to look at a chart of oil prices (e.g. here) and to compare the prices on two particular dates: July 14, 2008 and February 10, 2009. Those dates are just about the top and bottom of the price curve. So what happened on those two dates?

On July 14, 2008, President Bush lifted the ban on offshore drilling for oil. That very day the price of oil fell from its all-time high of $147.27. By the end of the week, the price had fallen $16. Within a month the price dropped to $115 and continued to fall pretty steadily until it bottomed out at about $35 in mid-February, 2009.

On February 10, 2009, the Obama administration reimposed a ban on offshore drilling. Within days, the price of oil started to rise. By the end of February it had jumped from about $35 to almost $45. In April the price reached $50 and in May passed $60. Now it is almost double the price when Obama blocked drilling.

Is it a coincidence that the price fell when Bush allowed drilling and then rose when Obama blocked drilling? I doubt it. It seems much more likely that Bush’s action caused the price to fall and Obama’s action caused the price to rise.

Some people might object that a simple announcement couldn’t affect the price because it would take 5 or 10 years to actually get the oil out of the ground. What they don’t realize is that the price of oil today is affected by the perception of the future price. Oil producers who expect the price to fall in five years prefer to sell today at a relatively high price rather than leave the oil in the ground and sell at a lower price five years from now. Conversely, producers who expect the price to rise are inclined to leave the oil in the ground until the price does rise.

Obama has said that he likes high gas prices because they discourage use of carbon-based fuel and encourage the development of alternative energy sources. His Congress is working on a “cap and trade” bill that will raise energy prices even more.

When will people realize that Obama and a Democrat Congress are bad for our pocketbooks?

P.S. Back in July, when Bush lifted the ban, Reuters described it as “a largely symbolic move unlikely to have any short-term impact on high gasoline costs.” Right.