The reason I am not watching the Democrat debates is because I can not stand that much idiocy in such a condensed format. I prefer sound bites, where I can hear the stupids at brief intervals. At any rate, I accidentally flipped through CNN and heard Dick Gephardt condemn Bush for not having “an energy plan that makes us no longer dependent on Middle Eastern oil.”
Take a moment, think of the immensity of the stupidity in the statement by itself, then think about the Democrat unwillingness to drill domestically or use nuclear power, and then talk amongst yourselves.
MommaBear
How can we talk amongst ourselves with all that babble going on from the Donks?!
Kimmitt
1) We don’t spend a lot of oil on electricity, so nuclear power plants are a totally unrelated issue.
2) I want to make sure you’re genuinely advocating the notion that the US could possibly supply its own oil needs domestically without conservation efforts before I lay down the smackdown.
John Cole
Kimmitt- There is simply no way, even with conservation, increased fuel eficiency, whatever to get rid of our reliance on middle east oil. We may be able to reduce it, but we can never end our reliance, which is what was so stupid about the remark.
BTW- nuclear power- I was thinking of electrical cars, which I am not opposed to at all. I would drive one.
Dimmy Karras
Gephardt’s remark does not mean that we should aim to be using zero Middle East oil. That is an unreasonable goal. However, conservation efforts could make us far less dependent on the Saudi Arabia’s of the world. That is his point, and it’s a reasonable one.
Matthew
The real reason to not watch the debate is that it was really boring. Like, Tom Foley response to the State of the Union boring.
John Cole
If Bush said his plan would make us no longer dependent on middle east oil, and 6 months later we were using a drop of oil, every lefty would be calling him a liar and Kevin Drum would have a new example for his foolish taxonomy of lies.
Play by the same rules, damnit.
Harry
Gephardt’s statement is really stupid when you consider the “top secret master energy plan.” And that is: When push comes to shove, we just take the Saudis’ oil at gunpoint. Hmmm, that master plan took one sentence.
Dean
You know, the last time I checked, oil is a fungible resource. That is, the oil that lands at our shores may have originated in Saudi or in Venezuela or Indonesia, it makes little difference.
Which is why the real issue is the global oil market, since THAT sets the price of oil, regardless of source. Which, in turn, is dependent on the Middle East, b/c that is the world’s largest source of crude.
Therefore, whether the PHYSICAL oil comes to us by way of Dhahran or Caracas, the PRICE we pay for it will be set, in large part, by actions in the Middle East. About the ONLY way to avoid having the Middle East affect our oil prices (one way or the other) would be to become wholly independent of imported oil And even then, the price of American-produced oil could hardly be insulated from the larger global oil market, so you’d have to get us off oil, entirely). Which, in turn, means looking for new sources of material for plastics, fertilizer, etc.
Rotsa ruck!
Kimmitt
The question is whether or not Saudi Arabia can hold its oil production over our heads. If we consume as much oil (roughly) as we produce, then any increase in the price of oil (roughly) benefits us as much as it harms us, and we can tell the Saudis to climb a tree when necessary.
It is my opinion that conservation is by far the most effective approach to this problem, and since conservation has the pleasant side-effect of reducing pollution due to burning fossil fuels (not even getting into questions of global warming, just talking about smog and particulates), it’s kind of a no-brainer as far as I’m concerned.
I like nuclear power, but I love wind, solar, and wave-generation.