Speculation, Schmeculation!

Those with any sense of logic or decency have been annoyed for quite some time at the assertion from liberals that drilling in ANWR, or any other location infested with black gold, would not produce any oil for 7-10 years and in turn, would not reduce gas prices one cent until then.

(some of that ANWR oil supply would have been nice right about now if we started drilling back in the mid-90s like many wanted to, eh?)

But now we have real and hard evidence that liberal claims are just plain bunk. From today's NRO:

"In a dramatic move yesterday President Bush removed the executive-branch moratorium on offshore drilling. Today, at a news conference, Bush repeated his new position, and slammed the Democratic Congress for not removing the congressional moratorium on the Outer Continental Shelf and elsewhere. Crude-oil futures for August delivery plunged $9.26, or 6.3 percent, almost immediately as Bush was speaking, bringing the barrel price down to $136.

Now isn’t this interesting?

Democrats keep saying that it will take 10 years or longer to produce oil from the offshore areas. And they say that oil prices won’t decline for at least that long. And they, along with Obama and McCain, bash so-called oil speculators. And today we had a real-world example as to why they are wrong. All of them. Reid, Pelosi, Obama, McCain — all of them.

Traders took a look at a feisty and aggressive George Bush and started selling the market well before a single new drop of oil has been lifted. What does this tell us? Well, if Congress moves to seal the deal, oil prices will probably keep on falling. That’s the way traders work. They discount the future. Psychology and expectations can turn on a dime."

Before Bush rescinded the executive order we had two barriers that prevented us from increasing America's oil supply and, just as importantly, increasing that supply ourselves rather than buying from foreign entities. But still, as of right now we still can't drill for any oil offshore. Yet one distinctly symbolic effort by our Executive Branch decreased the price of oil. Imagine how speculators will react when offshore drilling truly is opened up by Congress and Americans are able to fully engage in digging our way out of ridiculously high gas prices.