Topic category:  Other/General

Hillary Clinton knows no shame in her quest for power. She will say and do just about anything to obtain it. Ok, so the “just about” is wishful thinking. We could only hope that she had such a constraint. The fact is she will, without a doubt, say and do anything to obtain it.

From a woven tale about her daughter jogging around the Twin Towers on September 11th to a story about dodging fictitious sniper fire on a trip to Bosnia to a bogus sob story about a woman turned away from a hospital for not having $100 to pay for her visit – Hillary Clinton has a bag full of convenient tales. With her political life on the line and a shot at the Presidency slipping (thank God) from her grasp she has pulled out another tale custom crafted for all the little “children” who eagerly gather at her feet waiting for the next story about how evil the free markets are and how dire of a shape America is in.

This week, while stumping for votes and pandering to her base, Hillary told another whopper of a tale which included calling OPEC a “monopoly”. She said this of the organization, which is a popular target for windmill tilting liberals, to explain soaring oil and gasoline prices:

“[OPEC] can no longer be a cartel, a monopoly that get together once every couple of months in some conference room in some plush place in the world, they decide how much oil they’re going to produce and what price they’re going to put it at. That’s not a market. That’s a monopoly.”

There she is donning her armor, lowering her lance, mounting her donkey and charging right for that windmill; a windmill which in her eyes is the vicious beast called OPEC. What a “hero” in the eyes of liberals and uninformed voters everywhere!
But the problem is that OPEC is not a “monopoly”. I know that this little, troublesome fact will not matter much to those that have pledged allegiance to Hillary Clinton and her ideas but I am going to address it anyway for the rest of you out there in America who have more than two active brain cells to rub together.

The facts are that OPEC supplies only 42% (37.08 out of 86.94 million barrels total production per day) of the world’s oil as of February 2008 and 42% is hardly a “monopoly” which is defined as:

“exclusive ownership through legal privilege, command of supply, or concerted action”

“exclusive possession or control”

“a commodity controlled by one party”

I understand that the dictionary to a liberal is like Holy Water to a vampire, but could they at least be bothered to use words in their proper context?

In the real world, you know that one outside of Washington D.C., 42% is hardly “exclusive ownership” or “exclusive possession” or “control by one party”. But hey, it is a good story for liberals to clamp their teeth into and be shuttled into the voting booth believing as though it were the gospel truth.

Meanwhile the actual solution to higher oil and gasoline prices is staring us right in the face – produce more of our own oil and refine it. But we cannot seem to get to that conclusion because every time we want to do just that people that would be your typical Hillary Clinton supporter threaten to sue on behalf of the Polar Bear or designate the land as a World Heritage Site under control of the United Nations and all but kill any attempt to increase the supply of oil on the market. We cannot get to that conclusion because every time someone proposes to build a new refinery they kick and scream and shut down that process too, thus preventing an increase in gasoline supplies.

We could also come to some sort of agreement on what kinds of gasoline to use rather than having refineries producing dozens of custom blends demanded by state and regional bureaucracies come summertime and that cannot cross into other regions and states if needed without a lot of hassle. Short supply coupled with high demand does funny things to a market. One of those “funny things” is that prices go up.

But oh no, it is obviously OPEC’s fault. And it is also probably that other creature called “Big Oil” that is daring to make a profit on a low margin commodity. Heck, Hillary has already stated that she is going to take their money if she becomes President. Hmm … take money from oil companies … nope cannot find that power in the Constitution. Oh well, I’m sure she will solve that predicament with some creative rewriting of that founding document and misuse of words.

I guess what I would really like to know is what drug is Hillary on, which all of her supporters are also taking too it seems, that makes them see windmills as fictitious beasts that need slain rather than focus on reality. Or maybe they are not on any drug at all. Maybe they are just too drunk with their own power lust.

J. J. Jackson

Biography - J. J. Jackson

J.J. Jackson is a libertarian conservative author from Pittsburgh, PA who has been writing and promoting individual liberty since 1993 and is President of Land of the Free Studios, Inc. He is the Pittsburgh Conservative Examiner for Examiner.com. He is also the owner of The Right Things - Conservative T-shirts & Gifts http://www.cafepress.com/rightthings. His weekly commentary along with exclusives not available anywhere else can be found at http://www.libertyreborn.com