There is excellent reason to believe that Senator Obama has already lost the election to Senator McCain. In the end, his nutty associates won't matter. Nor will his almost complete lack of meaningful experience. By opposing increased domestic energy production in fossil fuels, Obama has taken a completely untenable position on what will be the deciding issue in the election. At the same time, McCain rushed to do the right thing - he will be our next president.

Americans are already boiling over gas prices, and winter has yet to start; wait until home heating bills are mailed. Even if Washington subsidizes heating oil, that solves nothing. There is every indication that oil prices will continue to rise, making Obama's position more obviously ludicrous with every passing week. And there's no sign yet that the Democrat leadership is going to change their stance; just today Harry Reid quipped, “Oil makes us sick. Coal makes us sick.”

Most people will vote with their pocketbooks, and others will have begun to understand that the left desperately wants high energy prices, something they have advocated for years as a means of promoting conservation. Obama himself, in the wake of the massive gas price run up to $4 and more, merely lamented that it happened so quickly. As prices go ever higher, with perhaps some temporary drops, every hike will spread the fear that the people and the economy just can't take it much longer. And Mr. Obama will be offering what, precisely? Hope. And hope will not cut it when consumers are losing more and more ground.

Obama took the ultra-liberal approach to energy policy and has been repeating it incessantly. So Obama has already blown his presidential candidacy, on the energy issue. He is flat wrong, and one has to wonder what he would actually do with real power in dangerous situations. Even if he makes an about face of sorts on domestic development, he's already shown either his true colors (radical environmentalism uber alles) or a disturbing inability to grasp the obvious in the face of crisis. Existing alternative technologies will not do the job; it would take a solar panel field the size of Connecticut to power New York City. With some thought, it will occur to most people that an Obama presidency holds no hope for consumers and businesses concerned with energy prices, so he cannot conceivably be elected.

Forgive me for not rebutting the standard leftist bilge about domestic production: dirty power, years to develop, acres already leased, unsafe waste, windfall profits, etc. It's all low-brow rubbish, intended to dupe only the idiots among us. Strangely, democrats are buying and parroting this duplicitous and dishonest drivel, while the bulk of America is dismissing it as the obvious lies and irrelevancies that they are. Why is the left consistently willing to ignore reality in order to prop up their fantasies? This is their curse. They do it consistently enough that they literally require a stupid and complacent population in order to meet their ends by democratic means. We ought to take the left's treasonous abuse of the courts' “review” power as a compliment to the American people – we are not yet brainwashed enough by the short bus crowd and their 'something for nothing, dog eat dog' worldview to willingly give them power. They always have to campaign as something they are not - until now. Obama missed the short bus on the way to the campaign, and while walking there, he came to a really stupid decision.

In the end, Obama will lose the election for the very reason he should: his first reaction to every significant problem is essentially identical: more spending, more taxes, more regulations, or a combination of the three. Listen to him. When you really listen, you see that this is not merely a pattern, it seems to be inexorable, it happens every time he opens his mouth. As the distastefulness of his autocratic dreams starts to sink in, a predictable 'run to the center' may fool some gullible people, but does any sane person take such obviously phony displays seriously any longer? What business do the media have reporting approvingly on such charades?

Thank God we have a real leader ready to take the helm. If John McCain's quest for the presidency is successful, some will mark Wednesday, June 25^th, as a turning point. It was on that day that McCain drew the energy line clearly and positioned himself on the side of sanity, securing the election in the process. He visited the University of Nevada at Las Vegas, in the proverbial shadow of Yucca Mountain, the likely repository of much of the the nuclear waste produced in the 45 new nuclear plants McCain proposes green lighting in the next few years (Obama is opposed to rapid nuclear development, of course). At UNLV McCain threw down the gauntlet: America has what it takes to be energy independent, all we lack is the will. His Lexington Project envisions an aggressive effort to end American dependence upon foreign sources of energy by 2025. Take a few minutes to read it. The first half is spot on. McCain lays out a realistic vision for the future, based on technologies and reserves that exist now. It contrasts sharply with Obama's approach of consumer austerity, punishing energy producers, and hoping for technological advances that may or may not come.

McCain understands that we are sitting on top of everything we need to power our automobiles and plants for decades if not centuries. If we have to endure regular price shocks because of reliance on foreign oil, America's economic future will always be uncertain. No matter how good things seem to be going, we will always be at the mercy of forces beyond our control. With our combined reserves of coal, oil, natural gas, and uranium, America is the world's premiere energy superpower.

Perhaps as importantly as staking out the winning position on the deciding issue of the election, McCain introduced a new seriousness to his candidacy. Previously opposed to offshore drilling and the expansion of many other domestic energy supplies, he's done the right thing and made an about face. This opens the door on other fronts. McCain will be our next leader, and circumstances desperately require that he re-examine his thinking on several issues:

• President McCain's opposition to drilling in a tiny part of the immense and desolate Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) will soon look silly alongside his bold Lexington Project. To accommodate the legitimate interest in preserving important parts of our shared environmental heritage, perhaps a compromise of sorts is in order. In addition to reclaiming the land, some similar acreage elsewhere in the country could be set aside as a refuge. If the environmentalists are actually concerned about preserving biodiversity and habitats, this idea should delight them. In any case, whether they like it or not, they ought to propose it themselves, because drilling in ANWR will happen; events to date are quite likely the tip of a very large and ugly iceberg.

  If McCain can argue for opening up most of the country to energy exploration in a way that has no net negative affect on the environment, Americans will support him in landslide proportions, and many dedicated environmentalists will support him with few reservations. And as McCain's election looks increasingly likely, energy prices on the world market will drop as it becomes clear that the world's real energy super-power is about to awaken with a start. It goes without saying that an important element of the Lexington Project will have to be expediting exploration and extraction. That will mean legislation with reasonable environmental restrictions, and an end to the legal wrangling that now ties these projects up for years.

• McCain's consistent advocacy of a carbon offset program to curb global warming should be reconsidered. He has consistently advocated what amounts to a tax on carbon emissions. He's also insisted that much of global warming is man-made, and can be corrected if we limit carbon emissions and other 'greenhouse gases'.

Yet 31,000 American scientists, including more than 9000 Phds, have signed a petition doubting man's contribution to any global warming. The website promoting the petition argues, “In PhD scientist signers alone, the project already includes 15-times more scientists than are seriously involved in the United Nations IPPC process. The very large number of petition signers demonstrates that, if there is a consensus among American scientists, it is in opposition to the human-caused global warming hypothesis rather than in favor of it.”

In addition to asking why all of these scientists have refused to buy the demagogic line that “the debate is over”, McCain should argue that the economic situation has changed, because it has. The energy shock shows the sensitivity of the American economy in a way that was not evident before now. The shock has also encouraged many of the changes that will serve us well in the future: promoting a new ethic of conservation, awakening people to the elemental importance of energy, the development and widespread sale and use of hybrid cars and more energy efficient vehicles, etc. There's probably no turning back; this period will likely not be forgotten by consumers any time soon, regardless where oil prices go from here. Industry and marketing are already focusing on more sustainable products and technologies. The market says that oil prices will likely be high for some time, and the market believes that conservation and efficiency will be watchwords for years. So like clockwork, the bulk of the market system is retooling to accommodate this reality. The market has responded vastly more quickly and efficiently than the government ever could, and without spending any of our money.

There's also good reason to wonder if whatever we could do will make any difference in the end. China, which dismisses environmentalism as quaint, is completing a coal fired electric power plant every three days. They will soon dwarf our 'carbon footprint'. Much of their country is a polluted mess, and the Chinese government doesn't seem to care unless it makes them look bad in Olympics coverage. It may be impossible to dissuade them from their ambivalence. If so, in the long run it may not matter a whit what we do. If current emissions levels are going to push the world over the brink, the US literally might as well do nothing beyond what we are doing now, since China and India are certain to push us way, way over the same brink by themselves, in short order. At the least, the issue requires considerable study before we fundamentally alter our economy to deal with something we may not be able to affect in any significant way. Edward Teller, the father of modern physics, is a signatory. McCain should sit down with him, and perhaps some of the other signatories.

The history of the earth's climate is one of constant changes. Until we know for sure what is happening and why, and whether we can really do anything about it, massive government action is simply irresponsible. In the meantime, we can encourage voluntary action by citizens that addresses pollution of all kinds, such as McCain's proposed $5000 tax credit for zero emission vehicles.

It is absolutely necessary to encourage alternative energy sources and energy efficiency. But not with direct government investment, which is almost always a boondoggle.  McCain has the right idea with his proposed $300 million prize for a dramatically more efficient battery. He ought to take it further, proposing a list of prizes for any number of energy-related advances, from solar cells to super-conductors. And the prizes should be significant enough that investors will take them into consideration when funding projects. Tax free prizes in the billions would give any firm or private inventor the capital to be a significant player in the marketplace. How many trillions would the discovery of sustainable fusion – unlimited energy – be worth to the world economy? Development on all levels, everywhere in the world, would leapfrog within a generation. Is a prize of $50 billion unreasonable for workable fusion?

The world is full of intelligent, determined people, all bent on carving out a place for themselves and their countrymen, and they are now awakening to the fact that energy is to economies what blood is to individuals. They will want whatever they can get, and everywhere on earth except America, they are hard at work at getting it. This fact alone makes Obama's unique position on the issue dubious – do all of these countries hate the environment? Are they all wrong about the importance of developing fossil fuels – only Obama and the rest of the radical left are right? A detached psychologist may suspect that a form of collective mental illness grips these demagogues.

In America, events will insure that domestic fossil fuel production will increase dramatically regardless what democrats and environmentalists say today. Before long, anyone opposing it will be politically extinct, except those representing the wackiest districts and states.

Normally it's bad form, on principle, to offer helpful advice to the enemy, but here is some: save this part of your credibility, for the country's sake. Otherwise, you risk both repudiation at the ballot box and lasting contempt from the American people. There is no special interest too large to throw from the train (off a bridge) to avoid the energy train wreck you've engineered for yourselves. Conservative democrats: If your leadership won't change on this issue, switch parties. You don't want to go down with these blithering idiots

TOTA