If I had the authority, I would use enhanced interrogation methods on progressives. It wouldn’t be my intention to hurt them. At least that wouldn’t be my sole intention. I would simply want to compel them to face facts and to quit parroting left-wing lies.

For one thing, no matter what AARP and the New York Times would have you believe, most Americans don’t favor ObamaCare. Even a lot of Democrats don’t. That’s why it took bribery and intimidation by Obama, Pelosi and Reid, to get the damn thing enacted.

Another fact of life is that the federal government does not create jobs, except those jobs in government that those of us in the private sector are then forced to pay for through our taxes. The only way the feds can help employment is by lowering taxes and eliminating the endless regulations that, thanks to the ecological zealots, hogtie business for the sin of pursuing profits and placing the comfort and well-being of human beings over that of such lower life forms as snails, spiders and ecological zealots.

It is time that Congress and the president acted like adults and quit pandering to those who keep insisting that people control the climate. If we did have such powers, we would have done away with snowstorms, hurricanes and really rotten weather during the World Series. It is also time that we quit pretending that wind and solar power will ever replace fossil fuel. If wind power had such magical properties as the fruitcakes would have us believe, Washington, D.C., would have been a fossil fuel-free zone years ago.

Until something better comes along, we are stuck with natural gas, coal, nuclear power and oil. That being the case, it’s high time that we begin building more nuclear reactors and start drilling in the ocean, in Alaska and anywhere else in America where the geological experts tell us there is oil to be found.

At the same time, the moratorium on building oil refineries must be ended. Who the heck is in charge, anyway? The Chinese? The Saudis? Mahmud Ahmadinejad? Al Gore?

One might, if one were of a kindly nature, pay lip service to idiots and even con men, but only a person out to sabotage America would allow such folks to dictate our energy policy.

Either we want to be free of dependence on the various anti-American despots in the Middle East, Russia and Venezuela, or we don’t. And if for some reason that escapes me, we aren’t serious, it’s time we quit whining about the high cost of gasoline. The folks selling the stuff to us are not our friends. They have every reason on earth to gouge us. But that’s inevitably the fate of suckers, saps and crybabies.

Speaking of those geologists, I think that while acknowledging that experts exist in the world, we should keep in mind that their expertise is limited, as a rule, to their specific field. Unfortunately, we tend to bestow omnipotence on individuals simply because they’ve won a Nobel Prize or, worse yet, are rich.

People, after all, cop a Nobel for no better reason than that a small group of Scandinavians have somehow determined that they know a lot about, say, physics, chemistry or economics; people achieve wealth because they know how to make, sometimes inherit, occasionally steal, money. But as Tevye pointed out in “Fiddler On the Roof,” while fantasizing about a radical turnaround in his own financial circumstances: “When you’re rich, people think you really know.” I would add that one other advantage that the rich have over others is that people will inevitably laugh at their jokes, no matter how lame.

I heard a while back that NPR’s CEO, Vivian Schiller, was denied her 2010 bonus because of the way she handled the dismissal of Juan Williams. The question that came to mind is why the CEO of a non-profit enterprise should be in the habit of collecting a yearly bonus, especially when a great deal of the outfit’s funding comes out of our tax dollars.

In 2012, in addition to the president, 33 senators will be up for re-election. Only 10 of them will be Republicans. In other words, the GOP could be poised to take control of both houses. But in order to do so, they will have to remember how and why they gained control of the House last November. If they remind us even slightly of the clowns who pretended to be Republicans, but served as Ted Kennedy’s drooling lap dogs from 2001-2007, they will discover just how quickly they can be un-elected.

As for the 23 Democrats who will be up for re-election in 2012, I hope they will spend the next two years remembering what happened to the poor, dumb slugs who had spent the previous two years taking their marching orders from those left-wing drum majorettes, Pelosi and Reid.

It would also serve them well to keep in mind that Barack Obama’s coattails are even shorter than those of Batman’s arch nemesis, the Penguin.