Barack Obama modifies his stance on offshore drilling:
Barack Obama said Friday that he would be willing to compromise on his position against offshore oil drilling if it were part of a more overarching strategy to lower energy costs.
“My interest is in making sure we’ve got the kind of comprehensive energy policy that can bring down gas prices,” Obama told The Palm Beach Post early into a two-day swing through Florida.
“If, in order to get that passed, we have to compromise in terms of a careful, well thought-out drilling strategy that was carefully circumscribed to avoid significant environmental damage – I don’t want to be so rigid that we can’t get something done,” Obama said.
Look, I know that there are people who are suffering because of high gas prices. I’m one of them, although I know that, like many of you, I can probably afford the prices more than a lot of people. My problem with this is that I think democrats should be solidly be on the side of finding alternative energy. Rising gas prices have made a difference. I’ve noticed a lot more people riding MARTA in Atlanta – a LOT more. I’d be willing to bet many of these people were like me, before I made a commitment to figuring out the system and how to make it work. Pain works.
Personally, I don’t want to see gas prices come down because we’re drilling and finding more. The United States is finally getting a taste of what it’s been like in Europe and the rest of the world forever. When I first moved to Atlanta from Canada, I remember gas was 89¢ a gallon. There will never be improvements made in mass transit, no one will ever complain that we’re not investing in wind energy, and no one will ever be pushing for plug-in hybrids or electric cars is gas is cheap as dirt. Finally, with gas at $4.00, we’re starting to seriously talk about this stuff. Hell, we’ve got T. Boone Pickens, an oil guy, completely investing himself in this. and so what if he knows he’ll make a fortune off it. i don’t care. If he’s the one who makes it happen, then I’ll put my electric bill money in his wallet. We cannot drill our way out of this, as he has come to realize.
I would love to see the price of oil come down, but NOT because we’re drilling more of it; rather, I want to see it come down because we don’t use it. Ideally, I would love to see Exxon, Chevron, Shell, and BP lead the industry by becoming alternative energy companies. and if they refuse to do it, I want to see them tank.
Obama’s new position is wrong-headed, in my opinion.
Added: I had a conversation with my best friend, who is totally against hybrid vehicles. For him, they’re just ways to prolong our dependence on gas. I agree with him.
glasgowtremontaine
What Obama just said doesn’t make him less “solidly on the side of finding alternative energy”. He’s saying, he wants to get legislators to sign onto such a plan — and he’s not ruling out small compromise on drilling as a means of getting enough of them to do so. It’s a bargaining chip, not a solution in itself.
Tim H.
I think Obama’s change is dumb, but only because he’s trying to appeal to people who will never, ever vote for him and pissing off his base, pretty much like FISA.
On oil prices however, it’s looking like at around $140/bbl is where the wheels completely come off the economy. Besides the will to start building alternatives, you must also have the means and the time. And if the price of oil keeps increasing, we won’t have any of them.
demimondian
And Michael D. shows it whenever he posts one of his tenditious liberterrible screeds — it gets attention.
So here’s a serious question: how much pain will be avoided by opening up more offshore drilling?
Answer: none. The very fact that there will be no payoff for 10 years, and that the number of currently unexploited leases is huge means that there drilling offshore will have be no effect on prices. Meanwhile, though, by saying “sure, I’ll compromise — here’s a workable middle ground”, Obama at least defuses the issue, and possibly opens it up to a Republican stumble. Remember the the GOP wants the issue, not really the resolution.
Sootytern
Carrots and sticks, Michael D., carrots and sticks. One without the other usually gets you nowhere or, even possibly, in the wrong direction. Quite frankly we will go over the cliff without compromise. If people just dig in their heels and will not compromise, nothing will get done to alleviate the coming disaster. And I do mean disaster. We have to find substitutes for oil, i.e., wind, solar, etc., but we cannot do without oil for now and a number of years into the future.
jake
Translation for the slow on the uptake:
He just said no to any “plan” the GOP might have.
Remember John McCain’s tax holiday? Remember how when pressed he never produced a bill?
ploeg
So what you do is give to congressional candidates who share your views on offshore drilling. Obama can then negotiate an energy policy with a solid Democratic majority in Congress.
BJ
I think your, (and your friend’s), position is far too absolutist. Improving mass transit, increasing fuel efficiency standards, switching over to electric vehicles running on renewable power sources are all laudable goals, and they will happen far faster if it is clear that gas prices aren’t going to drop and are instead likely to keep climbing year over year.
But it will take an awfully long time to completely revamp the infrastructure of North America and completely turn over the entire automobile fleet. Any way you look at it, we’re going to keep needing large amounts of oil for a long, long time. It’s going to be a weaning process, not going cold turkey.
Offshore drilling won’t make a significant impact on rising gas prices unless fuel usage drops considerably in the intervening years before any of that oil can come on-line. If oil prices do drop that significantly, then off-shore drilling becomes too expensive to make sense. If prices keep rising, then it still only provides a very small brake to the weaning process.
Besides, from Obama’s very carefully worded statement, this is more of a gesture than a shift, as Marc Ambinder puts it.
DanM
I’m having a pretty tough time viewing Obama’s statement as a position that can possibly be construed as support of additional offshore drilling. I’m trying, but I just can’t really see your point.
All he seems to be doing here is signaling a willingness to to compromise on a potential sticking point if that is necessary in the future. I don’t detect any shift in his fundamental opposition to drilling our way out of our energy/environmental crises.
What am I missing?
cain
Well said, Demi. I think you’ve hit on what he’s trying to do here. Although partisans might still find this abhorrent because they don’t want us to compromise anything with Republicans.
cain
Genine
As Steve Benen has noted, the change in stance is a political one. Obama has tried to be reasonable and talk to the public about the problem, but its not having an effect. Apparently polls are showing that a huge majority of Americans are for off-shore drilling and they think NOT drilling is producing high gas prices.
The stupidity is so high that Steve mentioned even environmentalists are hedging on the issue.
Anyway, if this is what Obama needs to do to win, that’s fine. Also its been noted that it would take a few years for such drilling to start, which means Obama has more time to change the minds of people. Right now, he only has a few months and it takes a long time to get through that much stupid.
So yeah, the FISA thing- made me mad. This? Not-so-much because I think its pretty obvious this is pander to win and not really his stance. With poll numbers like 83% of Americans thinking not drilling is driving up oil prices- its understandable.
I’m more pissed off that, once again, we have to cater to stupid people.
Joshua Norton
Everyone is hysterically screaming “drill, drill” with the same sheep chorus that screamed “bomb, bomb, war, war”. They can’t think past the bumper stickers. Even in Exxon-Mobil dropped a drill in everyone’s back yard, there’s no guarantee that the oil would go to the USA, unless the companies were nationalized. A word that causes repigs to mess their Depends.
As with all mindless chants, the devil is in the details.
john b
so how long before obama is deemed a flip-flopper on this issue?
Laughingriver
John, Obama is playing smart politics on this. He said this after he put forth his plan to provide a $1000 dollar energy rebate paid for from the profits of big oil.
So he says hey, I’m willing to compromise, you give me my $1000 dollar energy rebate paid from the profits of big oil and I’ll agree to add some more acreage to the millions of acreage that the oil companies already have but ain’t drilling on.
And then the democrats can put in a stipulation in the bill that the leases expire within a year if the oil companies do not start drilling them within a year.
And they just wait and let the republicans vote against that.
A political win all the way around for the democrats…
Neo
Saying that drilling must be considered as part of a broader energy policy is the political equivalent of saying .. “I’d like to talk about something else” as this stance gives him the final option, most notably after the election, to simply say no.
There is no real change .. Obama just doesn’t like being beaten about the head and face by an issue that he knows will take him down. His energy policy (as outlined on his web site) has no such point that would include additional oil drilling and he has repeatedly said that it won’t help.
The Other Steve
Drilling more won’t bring down the cost of gas. The “Supply” in the equation has nothing to do with where you are drilling, it’s the sum total of output. So they can drill over here, but in the meantime the oil over there is drying up.
Take a look at the history of oil output from Alaska over the last 30 years. Alaskan output is at around 1/3rd of what it once was.
bago
Americans are pussies. When I was in Turkey gas was over 10 dollars a gallon. (1.56 ytl per liter). On the highways, the only people that drove were rich assholes in their beemers and their Mercedes going 120 mph (193 kph) who would flash their high beams at you and expected you to pull over. They did not even conceive of the idea that you might not comply. This is also why the length of freeway that had a guard rail had twisted metal at least once every mile.
Companies need to pay for their externalities. If you you bury nuclear waste you need to buy the land and secure it and pay for the security. If you spout carbon into the air you need to pay for the reclamation or amelioration of such outputs.
We have a high data infrastructure to track and cost things more efficiently. Lets use it.
rob!
um, maybe your friend could look for oil up his ass, since that’s where his head is right now.
the oil crash is coming…and nothing will stop it. if we have nothing but republicans in office, the crash will hit us like the Great Depression x100. the only way to ease the pain as we change over to all alternative fuels is give ourselves enough time using oil to develop these technologies and get everyone else in the country to realize its a necessity.
i bet, if we had nothing but Dem presidents for the next 20 years, we’d have this problem licked by 2029. BUT WE’RE NOT GONNA HAVE THAT. Christ, we’re having a hard enough time getting one in now.
i don’t think we should drill for anymore oil, period. so let’s at least try and stretch what we’ve got as long as possible, give the rest of the country time to come around on this issue.
plus, hybrids save people money. my gf just bought one and she goes to the pump now once every 2 1/2 weeks, compared to me, who has to go every single week. how the hell is that a bad thing?
buermann
With 100% offshore rig utilization it’ll be quite a while before any drilling is done, just like the EIA says. If we haven’t passed greenhouse emissions legislation that makes said drilling cost prohibitive by the time the oil companies could actually get around to it, it’s likely we’ll already be so thoroughly screwed it won’t much matter.
For an added bonus, the NYT is reporting the compromise bill would slash $30 billion in oil subsidies. Not a bad deal.
cleek
already been done.
—
look, Obama’s talking like a Senator here. if you want to pass bills for things you like, you sometimes have to let things you don’t like tag along. it’s called “compromise”. it’s how legislatures work. BFD
xyzzy
I don’t understand the outcry over this; perhaps some emphasis is needed:
He’s saying that he’s not going to play Bush’s game (“no compromise, my way or the highway!”), but rather is actually going to be a grownup about this and try to be inclusive. He recognizes that there are some obstinate assholes who will never do anything but cry ZOMG MORE DRILLING IS THE ONLY WAY!!!1!! and rather than antagonize them and have a congress that produces no usable energy policy at all, he’s willing to consider throwing the idiots a bone if it means they’ll agree to doing something useful as well.
There’s nothing wrong-headed about that, Michael.
Wildthumb
If we’re going to lose this election, I don’t think it should be over the issue of offshore drilling (no more than I think we should lose it over gun control). McCain’s numbers have been moving upward lately and I think it’s because of the gas issue. He seized on it, and as fucking dumb as the demagogued and bamboozled public is on the subject, I say do the political thing and pretend you’re on the public’s side about their pain. Bill Clinton won that way. I don’t think McCain gives a shit about gas prices, but he’s winning on the energy policy stuff, something that should be a slam-dunk for Dems this year. Losing this whole magilla over the price of gas boggles my mind.
Jerry R
The perfect is the enemy of the better.
Politics is the art of the possible.
The first task of an elected leader is to get elected, while remaining as whole as possible.
Glocksman
Exactly.
In my local paper’s website comments section, I keep mentioning Guy Caruso’s comments WRT expanded drilling and gas prices and I keep getting swamped by people saying that ‘drill everywhere’ will bring immediate relief from high prices.
I even had one person claim that she didn’t believe him and mention Gull Island as ‘proof’.
In other words, the GOP’s bullshit is having an effect and Obama ignores it at his peril.
Herb
The important part of that is this: “I don’t want to be so rigid that we can’t get something done.” I find that more refreshing than the lemon-lime flavored soda I’m sipping from.
Also…this might be a very shrewd move. Give them a little offshore oil drilling, and when oil prices (and profits) keep going up, then he can go, “Now what’s your excuse?”
Just Dropping By
so how long before obama is deemed a flip-flopper on this issue?
NPR was already announcing in its regular news coverage this morning that he flip-flopped on the issue.
ThymeZone
Obama has stated that he is willing to work with and find compromise with political forces that are key to developing a well rounded solution.
If anyone has a real problem with that approach, maybe you are living in the wrong country?
WTF? Really. WTF? Do you prefer pigheaded officials who pick a politically engineered position and then stick to it no matter what? Then maybe you should be a Republican.
Fuck. Just fuck.
carsick
Hybrids are essentially pushing the funding for more battery research and bringing the price down for battery manufacturing. That’s a good thing.
Obama knows drilling won’t bring the price down for a gallon of gas but there’s no harm in exploring or promising to look into it. He just doesn’t want to concede a popular, though ill informed, issue to his opponent.
Sirkowski
BAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAW!
Obama only said he’s not rigid on this position, unlike some people who are against Hybrids.
I thought we were through with that “Obama doesn’t support exactly what I want at 100%” FISA type pantie twisting bullshit.
Davebo
Look guys, the ban is going to expire on September 30th and I assure you it will very quietly not be re-authorized by congress with 30 days to go to an election.
John Cole
No offense, but Obama’s position on this sucks because you don’t have your pipe dream?
I give up. Fuck it. This country deserves McCain.
Davebo
And also, I’ve got 70k worth of gas guzzling investment parked in my garage right now.
I’d like to be able to keep driving them for at least 10 to 15 more years and one of them I plan to keep for life.
magisterludi
Considering the back log on ships and equipment for building platforms, it may be moot. By the time they get their first drop, we’ll be driving electric cars, if there is a God. I myself am eying a tuk-tuk, if the freaking insurance company CEOs get tossed from the picture.
I, for one of many, am going to go fully Marxist if the SCFM fucks this up for the people, like the sub-prime debacle. I have come to despise Wall Street.
Johnny Pez
As others have noted, the basic problem here is that most Americans regard cheap oil as a birthright, and they’ll vote for any politician who promises to give it to them.
Chris Huston
This was Obama trying to be nuanced in a landscape that will have none of that
.
Supposedly the AP is not reporting this paragraph too much
TheFountainHead
Wow, I thought this was a post by John and I was about to call him a flaming hypocrite.
But it’s Michael, so carry on with your lunacy…
L. Ron Obama
I’ll just tell my girlfriend to sell her hybrid and double her effective price of gas, because it doesn’t hurt enough. She’ll love that.
In fact she’ll probably pick up a Chevy Tahoe to replace it, just so she can damage the environment faster.
Next, she’ll change her vote from Obama to McCain so that the country is sure to hit rock-bottom as fast as possible. After all, only then can we destroy the GOP brand and start our recovery. See, Obama is just a way to prolong our dependence on Republicans.
Great fucking idea. What could possibly go wrong?
S
Somewhere on a drive between Maryland and West Virginia, I saw a bunch of solar panels with a big sign for BP Solar. The solutions that decrease oil dependency in the cities are not going to be the same solutions that decrease dependency in rural parts of the country. You can go on some rant against suburbs, but a lot of suburbs were originally farm land. Farm equipment requires fuel. Transporting food to the city requires fuel.
Electric power cars are not going to do anyone any good when the power is out for a week in some rural area after a big storm.
douglass truth
I’ve been for offshore drilling for quite awhile, because I think one of the things that has warped our attitudes about using oil is that we don’t see any of the consequences. It seems that for the USA, it’s OK to destroy portions of the Amazon, the Niger delta, and so on, because it’s invisible and happening to other people somewhere else. If we saw the consequences of oil drilling on our own shores, it might be some incentive to find ways to cut back use.
1jpb
I’m pleased to see that he’s put this on the table as part of a deal.
This just a BS wedge issue anyway. Oil companies already have several thousand offshore leases that they aren’t using. And, the number of drilling permits on federal lands has doubled in the last five years while the price of gas almost tripled. And, there isn’t going to be some silver bullet of newly accessible oil reserves because of the expanded off shore drilling, but folks did have the visceral feeling that such a silver bullet may exist, even if they knew the numbers didn’t add up. This is why even folks in the coastal states were telling pollsters that they’re more open to offshore drilling.
So, good for BHO.
chopper
it’s a political move no doubt at all. mccain flip flopped on offshore drilling recently as well.
Martin
Hybrids are a necessary solution. I agree that it’d be nice to skip right out of oil, but that isn’t going to happen. The energy problem needs to be broken down into two major segments:
1) Portable energy
2) Non-portable energy.
Right now, there are few portable energy options – gas, diesel, PNG. Electricity just isn’t there yet because batteries still suck. We wasted almost a century of R&D by not bothering to advance battery technology. Hydrogen fuel cells are getting close, but they’re very expensive and hydrogen itself is non-portable. Reforming something like PNG could work, however.
We need to solve the non-portable energy problem first since it’s far and away the easiest to do, and is also the biggest energy sink in the nation. By moving people off of cars to light rail and trains, you shift a portable energy problem to a non-portable one which allows a huge increase in options for how to get that energy. The most important shift should be from trucks to rail since that again is an easier problem to solve.
Honestly, we’re a long way from getting off gasoline. The problem is door-to-door transportation – and that’s a massive national problem to solve and very expensive in most areas. Big cities can get cars off the street without too much effort (political will more than anything – NYC could ban private autos in Manhattan today) but forget about it in Montana. In the near term, hybrids are a cheap and easy improvement (provided we are also willing to push for significant national fuel standards, lest we just end up with hybrid Hummers).
That’s changing fast. Generationally, it’s doubly true. All of our entering students are asking for courses that cover energy policy and so on. They’re actively wondering how this problem is going to get solved if the universities aren’t educating people about it. In our last exit survey of students almost half of respondents asked something along those lines. Just a year ago less than 5% mentioned it. I don’t think lower oil prices are going to reverse that trend – young people see it as a massive problem that they are about to inherit and they don’t seem too compassionate about your right to a Hummer today if it means they’re forced to bike to work in 5 years. This isn’t a theoretical issue to them.
chopper
pure electric cars currently don’t work because of two problems, each of which nixes them with a respective crowd – range and charging.
current ranges are a bit small. that’s fine for people who live in the city as they tend to have shorter commutes. thing is, i live in a 3rd floor walkup. i don’t have a garage and my car is parked on the street around the corner. how the hell am i supposed to charge up an electric car? people in the suburbs have garages, but they typically have longer commutes. yeah, it’d be great if the boss would install a charging station but then you’re depending on an infrastructure change that could come or go on a whim.
new battery tech is nice and is helping fix both problems though.
Steve
Added: I had a conversation with my best friend, who is totally against hybrid vehicles. For him, they’re just ways to prolong our dependence on gas. I agree with him.
Michael is right. For my next car, I plan to buy one of the many commercially available electric vehicles.
What?
Steve
Added: I had a conversation with my best friend, who is totally against hybrid vehicles. For him, they’re just ways to prolong our dependence on gas. I agree with him.
Michael is right. For my next car, I plan to buy one of the many commercially available electric vehicles. With so many good, viable choices, how can I go wrong?
Steve
Shit. That didn’t show up when I refreshed. What happened?
Martin
This blog is powered by Vista™. That was a feature. Blog posts now appear and disappear at random depending on whether Microsoft thinks you should be troubled to see them or not.
jake
Try squinting and turning your head to the right.
There is no change here, other than he’s set a pretty high bar for the Republicans who couldn’t form a reasonable plan if you threatened to bar them from public toilets.
They’ll find something else to whine about soon because it isn’t doing them any good to keep bitching. The less stupid of them know that if they passed a bill to allow off-shore drilling tomorrow, by November enough people would have noticed gas isn’t any cheaper. Of course in October we’ll hear that if only the Democrats had let them pass an off-shore drilling bill in the summer our psychologies would have been reversed and we’d be happy, but there’s no legal way to stop a GOPer from lying.
Ed Marshall
Someone needs to point out that most of that oil that people keep pointing at doesn’t come out of the ground at a profit unless you are working with $100/barrel prices. This isn’t “psychology” it’s a damn cost estimate if the magical psychology fairie makes the price of oil go down to less than that the oil companies would shut them down anyway.
grumpy realist
*sigh*….as someone who worked with the MIT Solar Car team and has 70% of a manuscript written about the history of the project (and the background of electric cars in the US in general…)
Been there, seen that. Go back in history. The US had transportation split among three different mechanical technologies at the beginning (leaving out rail): ICE, electric, and steam. (Remember the Stanley Steamer?) Gas had the advantage over the others because of range, but didn’t have the resupply stations (and other technological crankiness which was gradually changed by adding such things as a generator and a battery to the car to power such things as lights.). Electric had a leg up because of the ease of supply and simplicity of technology. The range issue didn’t become one until “touring” really became a big deal (and was possible after decent roads kept getting built). Electric cars lasted up until the mid-40s (milk trucks in NJ.)
Battery technology: nope, actually battery technology has been worked on incessantly since the beginning. Edison spent many of his later years in what would turn out to be unsatisfactory improvements on battery technology. The reason lead-acid batteries remain around is they are robust, can stand up to many duty cycles, and are relatively cheap. (Car batteries are not what you use to run a solar car, by the way–car batteries are designed for relatively shallow depletion/cycle–running them with the deep depletion cycles needed for solar cars can cause rapid degradation due to internal structural collapse.) And it’s not that we don’t have good battery technology around–the problem is that either the number of cycles ends up being short, the batteries are horrendously expensive, or they don’t have the robustness required (i.e., have a tendency to blow up under the nail gun test.)
We’re getting there–but it would help matters if we didn’t piss and moan about not being able to haul whatever weight we felt like for pennies over whatever distance pleases us. The era of cheap gas is coming to an end–get used to it.
Downpuppy
My only problem is the “bring down” gas prices. Obama knows perfectly well that it’s not about bringing down prices, its about keeping us afloat, period, during the declining phase of the oil age.
Which is why I’m actually quite pleased about this. “Do everything” is really the only approach with any chance of not throwing us into an energy meltdown.
craig
A couple people already mentioned this, but I figured I might as well join the chorus: speaking strictly as a lifelong Democrat who thinks the domestic drilling stuff is a grossly cynical ploy, I’ve been dying for some big horse-trading on these issue. Want Alaska? CAFE standards go up 2mpg a year for 10 years. Want more offshore? How about some sort of hundred-billion-dollar investment in mass transit and high-speed rail?
I think this is about getting Obama’s back foot in the right place for a little jujitsu later this year. What does McCain want besides what the oil companies want? What can he offer the whole country? It’ll dovetail nicely with the cynical political charge they’ll throw at him from the top while everyone plausibly detached from the campaign turns McCain into a punchline.
McCain’s campaign will come up short if Obama can box him in on a few things the crazy GOP base hates. It’s just practical stuff for the general.
xyzzy
Reread the Obama quote, Downpuppy. He’s not saying that drilling will bring down gas prices, he’s saying that if limited drilling will help form a broader consensus in order to do the things that will bring down prices, then he’s open to the idea.
AnneLaurie
Or, according to our Media Village Idiots, Obama caves to the Rethugs yet again, demonstrating an unseemly willingness to abandon the DFH voters who should be his ‘base’ by pandering to a bunch of low-information nitwits who wouldn’t vote for Obama if he were actually handing them Free Gas debit cards at their polling places. One reason the GOP *chose* offshore drilling as an issue in the first place is that it can’t be “solved” before November — all the energy CEOs sitting on their unused current leases and dusty plans for unbuilt refineries have Darth Cheney on speed-dial, remember? If Obama had said “Fvck this same-ol’-same-ol talk about giving more of our national treasure to the tycoons busy shipping oil to China, let’s “compromise” on something that will actually make a difference for people struggling with gas prices now,” the MVIs would have done their best to label him a DFH, but we’re reaching the point in the political cycle where terms like “uncompromising” and “stubborn” start to look like positives instead of negatives.
KRK
Every one else seems to be doing a good job of responding to Michael’s post and the aside about his best friend (who isn’t quite ready for energy policy prime time), so I’ll tackle this:
Two problems: First, converting farmland to suburbs doesn’t eliminate agricultural fuel consumption, it just moves it to a new location. And the suburbs are also populated with equipment requiring fuel, including cars, trucks, lawnmowers, weedeaters, snowblowers, etc. Also, as you point out, transporting food to the city requires fuel; you might also have considered that moving food production farther away from population centers (by converting surrounding farmland to suburbs) means that food has to be transported even farther, which — believe it or not — requires even more fuel.
As for the (non)relationship between electric cars and rural power outages, what exactly is your point? Our energy policy needs improvement in many directions; that doesn’t mean they’re all related. Or are you suggesting that electric cars should be made of flammable materials that can be burned for heat and light by rural residents facing power outages?
Conservatively Liberal
What I want to know is how Michael found this quote. Was it on the news or ?
Why? Read this.
Now while some Obama supporters may get (or are getting) pissed about this statement, many other people out there who may like this position will not see or hear the quote Michael based this entry on.
Ask yourself why. Why is it that the left can find this quote and go to town with it, yet many other people who may be influenced by this will never see it?
Our corporate media, hard at work setting up President McCain.
Downpuppy
Nope, xyzzy, I understood perfectly well. By ” it’s” I meant everything, not just drilling. We can & should do everything Obama is talking about, & more, with the hope that it will ameliorate the developing crisis, not that it will make gasoline under $3 again, ever.
jake
Yep. I swear the guy has memorized The Art of War. The Republicans know that if he gets in the White House they’ll spend their days receiving their asses on platters and never knowing quite how they came to be without an ass.
Martin
Oh, bullshit. The high end for oil extraction is $30/bbl right now. Oil is selling for 1400% of what it was a decade ago and drillers were making money then.
The reason they aren’t drilling on those leases is that they don’t need to. Exxon just reported record profits. Why spend money to increase profits when the market will hand them to you for free. And the leases guarantee that the oil underneath Exxon leases remains with Exxon – so drilling will only cost them investment money, have a negligible price effect on the market, get even more people bitching about their profits, and deny them a revenue source in the future. It’s foolish to assume that companies making strong profits are going to make decisions to boost those profits. More likely they’re going to invest to sustain the profits instead. Large profitable companies don’t go on offense – they dig in.
Now here’s the gambit:
There’s only so much of the stuff in the ground. To what degree do we trade lower oil prices today for much higher prices in the future, or even a complete lack of oil in a few decades? Rather than a windfall tax, why doesn’t the government just reclaim leases unused for a decade. That’ll spur the companies to drill, lower the price, and let the government resell (yes, sell) those leases to companies willing to drill.
The downside is that drilling now will reduce the amount we can extract because invariably extraction tech will improve allowing us to recover more in 10 years, and it’ll only accelerate the wicked side of the supply curve so our kids will be truly fucked instead of only moderately fucked because we’re such big pussies that we can’t take the bus and turn off the AC now and then.
There’s no winning the oil game from a societal standpoint – we got the good part out of it and didn’t bother planning for when things would go to shit because we rely on the market to do everything and they care fuck-all for whether society goes to shit. So now it’s just a question of when and how badly do you want to lose, and who are you willing to fuck over on the way there. And asking why Exxon will/won’t drill is a fools game – they’ll drill on their own schedule whether you give them more leases or not. They don’t fucking care if it costs you $70 to fill up your car – they’re making billions and that’s what the executives are paid to do. Things couldn’t be better from their perspective.
xyzzy
Well then, I’ll take the Mea Culpa approach and plead misinterpretation of your original comment. Regardless, I don’t think that Obama is in any caving/flip-flopping etc. or believing that drilling is going to lower prices. He seems to have a sense of what you call the developing crisis, and my feeling is that if he’s offering compromise on the drilling question, it’s because he realizes that it’s a necessary evil in order to gain support. Congresspeople who make carnival shows out of continuing “debate” in chambers after the lights have been turned out don’t care about developing crises or responsible policy, they are only concerned about getting themselves reelected in a (for them) very dismal election season–and they’ll do anything to make it look better.
On a completely different note, I find it amusing that the state that basically fucked the rest of the country in 2000 (FLA recount, anyone?) is one of the ones most likely to suffer the consequences of the Republican push for offshore drilling, should there be a massive spill. Last I heard, tourists don’t like sunbathing in black tar.
Phoenix Woman
Thank you, Jake.
As for hybrids as the root of all evil: Until we can get battery capacity upped by another order of magnitude, the true electric car isn’t going to be viable. However, a vehicle like the Chevy Volt will help buy the time needed to get the batteries needed (especially if the compressed natural gas option is chosen, which is cheaper and pollutes far less than gasoline).
And please, don’t start saying “but we all must ride bikes and buses and leave the suburbs for the cities”. Ain’t gonna happen, much as I would like to see it.
LongHairedWeirdo
I think what he said was the right thing to say, but I hope he doesn’t plan to actually *do* this. My experience with the Republicans is that their vision of “compromise” is to find a way to have the Democrats give them what they want.
(But, see, since the *Democrats* did it, that makes it a compromise.)
grandpajohn
Well hell since the oil companies have neither the equipment for or intention of actually drilling on any of these sites anyway compromise on them and get a real energy policy
TenguPhule
The goal of the McCain campaign in a nutshell.
nightjar
Tisn’t John Cole’s post TCR. This thread post was written by someone else. Conservative Reader should learn how to read before blog whoring.
Conservatively Liberal
You would think that the asshats on the right who think they are quoting John and posting the links here would realize that it is Michael who wrote this entry, and that John seems to disagree with him.
Fuck, you would think that the right would at least read something completely before attributing it to the wrong person.
I know, it’s too much to ask from asshats. It’s their small reptilian minds that prevent logical thought. They thought GOTCHA JOHN! ! ! and once again attacked without looking at all of the details.
It seems this is a pattern of their species.
Chet
That’s true, but they’re also testbeds for the battery and motor technologies we’ll need to make electric cars work.
And they’re the best thing going on the market right now if you want to reduce your gas usage, but can’t practically stop driving.
Bithead
You’re not the only one, FountainHead.
Already ran the correction. (Nod to Cole)
Bithead
Conservatively Liberal;
I wrote the article to which you refer, not the Conservative Reader. THey echoed my article out. Fuck, you would think that you would at least read something completely before attributing it to the wrong person.
Are you getting the point, yet?
John Cole
Everyone lighten up. I make the same kind of mistake all the time. You think someone has written something because it is their site, and lo and behold they have added writers. Shit happens.
Michael57
That slam against hybrids is nonsense. Until an alternative exists, what should we drive?
Conservatively Liberal
Sorry about that Bithead, but I never follow name links here and the title threw me but now I see where you are coming from. I guess The Conservative reader’s excuse will be that you were the one they quoted, right? ;)
Error in reading blog:
(Abort/Retry/Ignore/Fail)
/C:\f
demimondian
It’s unrealistic to hope that battery capacity can improve by an order of magnitude. The chemistry just doesn’t support it. It’s possible that some other electrical storage technology (e.g. “ultracapacitors”, or maybe some form of high efficiency fuel synthesis) might come along which could get rid of the need to burn stuff to get a high enough energy density to power an auto, but, if I were you, I wouldn’t bet on that.
w vincentz
hydrogen
NJDave
This hue & cry is based on the assumption that the reporting is accurate. Always dangerous:
“Like all compromises, it also includes steps that I haven’t always supported,” Obama conceded. “I remain skeptical that new offshore drilling will bring down gas prices in the short-term or significantly reduce our oil dependence in the long-term, though I do welcome the establishment of a process that will allow us to make future drilling decisions based on science and fact.”
Yes, this relies on a DailyKos diary http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/8/2/134356/2273/348/553935
but given the stellar performance of the traditional media, I wouldn’t be surprised.
Dennis - SGMM
Same for buses and trains, eh? After all, they too just prolong our dependence. Same for hybrids, Smart cars, motor scooters or carpooling. Ditto, maintaining your car and driving with a light foot. We’ll all just sit at home and wait for the fusion powered robots to make it all good.
America has spent the majority of the past hundred years building a nation that relied on the automobile for personal transportation. It was done one step at a time, one incremental change at a time. The steps and the changes were accomplished by convincing the populace that they were the good and the right thing to do. It will have to be undone the same way. I don’t know if we have the time. Absent the will, it doesn’t matter.
Dennis - SGMM
Helium
Lithium
Beryllium
Boron
Carbon
w vincentz
@ Dennis.
Maybe. my friend. but I still think H is the most promising.
Fulcanelli
The next time you hear some corporate big business “free market” asshole drone on about how the free market will prevail and the US economy will recover from the crippling effects of our dependency on oil and petroleum based fuels (gas, diesel, jet fuel) ask them:
“Who Killed the Electric Car?” to begin with, so many years ago…
The same greedhead clairvoyant corporate fuckwads who lost over 15 billion dollars last quarter.
If there’s a better example of schedenfreud, I haven’t seen it. Oh yes, let’s all keep listening to how corporate America and our “free markets” are going to solve our energy problems.
The battery technology sufficient to power an increasing amount of passenger cars and public transportation at least has been around for a long time. Solar photo cells, seem to do fine with the Hubble Telescope, the Space Station and umpteen other space exploration devices. Now granted, the amperage required for electronic gear like I mentioned above is minimal compared to the power needed to drive an electric motor in a car carrying an obese Republican Mississippi family down the road to the Dairy Queen, but corporate America hasn’t put any really substantial money into developing it either.
I worked with Honda, a very green company, for six years at the dealership level, and their Hybrid Civics almost NEVER had a problem with the battery, and when they did it was exchanged for another (at no cost to the car owner), which was then repaired and recycled into use again, not thrown away. And from what I could learn from my Honda rep, when their was a problem with a Hybrid battery, it was usually in the microcircuitry in the control and regulating mechanisms, not the power cells. Hmmm, a Japanese corporation. Oh, never mind.
I’m no socialist, but eventually energy is going to have to be Nationalized at some level an taken out of the hands of the so-called “free market”, or we’re all fucked.
Dennis - SGMM
Couldn’t resist.
It’s really a good thing. Now that they’ve figured out how to extract hydrogen with less energy, it’s even better. Now hydrogen is hugely inflammable, slippery to the point of distraction to store and move. So let’s say we solve those issues or that we come up with a means to produce so much hydrogen that they’re moot. Okay, in 2006 (The last year for which I could find figures) there were over 250,000,000 motor vehicles registered in the US. That’s a heap of vehicles to replace with clean burning hydrogen.
w vincentz
OK Dennis,
Points taken. Well stated.
So…how about chucking all those 250X10X7? Time for new ways of thinking…change.
H has potential. Make it either from pumped storage electric (at night) or solar, or wind, or tidal.
The byproduct of combustion is water vapor. No more releasing “greenhouse” gases into the atmosphere. (win).
Distribution? Immflammable? Geeze, my friend, guess I never saw a gasoline carrying 18 wheeler flipped and burning on a four lane. Oh, maybe I have.
Now is the time to be bold.
We need to be.
Only “fear” prevents making the next step.
I’ll add that something I learned long ago is “without risk, there is no gain.”
merelycurious
A very, very interesting breakthrough on the solar/hydrogen front was announced in the journal Science this week – if this scales up out of the lab and can handle a sufficient number of recycles it could be a gamechanger
http://www.boston.com/business/articles/2008/08/01/cheap_solar_at_night_mit_may_have_answer/
for people to lazy to follow the link MIT has come up with a catalyst that tremendously increases the efficiency of separating water into hydrogen & oxygen that uses safe, commonly available chemicals.
The plan works like this – solar cells collect energy during the day, sipping off a little of the of the collected energy, along with the super-efficient catalyst to separate hydrogen and oxygen in a small storage unit. at night when solar cells are useless, the hydrogen – oxygen are fed into a fuel cell and energy is created with the only byproduct being water.
also here
http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2008/oxygen-0731.html
w vincentz
@ Merelycurious,
Thanks for the link. Very interesting.
I wonder how much of the planet is covered with water.
Should be enough to keep us going for a while, though some folks would rather drill through it to get to the oil underneath it. (forgive me, I brought up McSame’s, Dubbya’s, and now (alas) Obama’s talking points).
FOOLS, they are. f-o-o-l-s.
Chuck Butcher
Things like MART may be useful in Atlanta, but out here East of Bum Fuck Egypt there is no such thing and there is a little matter of work trucks like mine that get 8mpg and weigh so much that a battery is a joke.
Zifnab
Japan seems to being doing just fine, and I don’t see them nationalizing their energy sources. Making something government-run versus free-market run doesn’t solve the problem if they’re all run by incompetent or corrupt individuals. And I really don’t want to see a Freddie Mac or Fannie Mae “too big to fail” energy company. For all the profits Exxon is making, at least we’re not bailing them out of massive losses. I take some cold comfort in that.
And if Barack wants to leverage off-shore drilling into a real energy bill, I say go for it. We’ve got solar cells and wind turbines that can make electricity more consistently and – soon – more cheaply than coal or oil. It will take them a decade to get what little oil they can harness into production, and by then if oil miraculously stays at $4 / gallon, people will still be backing off its use.
I honestly don’t think the GOoPers will sign on to what Obama would propose, because they’ll get what they want in the short run – a bunch of new leases for land they’re in no rush to develop – at the expense of long term cornered markets. I also think this will be a serious blow to southern coastal states like Florida – states that rack in billions in a tourist economy that needs clean beaches. Guys in districts like Myrtle Beach and Tampa Bay will balk. This is all just a big political game to the McCain campaign. They’re not thinking long term in the least.
So let Obama talk compromise. When the GOP runs away from the table screaming and crying about how unreasonable Obama is, they’ll look like the obstructionists and the fools. I trust Obama’s political sense for the moment. He’s been pretty good so far.
Martin
Yes, if this pans out – it’s pretty big.
Problem is that it won’t change the car problem because gaseous hydrogen is really goddamn hard to compress and store. Would work fine if you have enough space to store the hydrogen at lower pressure.
We’ve got a commercial hydrogen fuel station and production center at work. I’ll ask the guys next week if they’re on this.
w vincentz
Martin,
Consider liquification. Technology presently exists to compress gas to liquid states.
Think about the propane tank that powers you gas grill.
Next “fly in the ointment”?
rachel
There’s antimony, arsenic, aluminum, selenium,
And hydrogen and oxygen and nitrogen and rhenium,
And nickel, neodymium, neptunium, germanium,
And iron, americium, ruthenium, uranium… :D
phobos
Anyone that thinks we’re going to get out this mess without nationalizing an industry or two is kidding themselves.
After The Revolution some petroleum executives will be spared, depending on their willingness to be re-educated in our remote windmill and solar gulags…
—
Snark aside, as long as there are enough Limbaughs and Hannitys to maintain the unwitting dupes at a crazed, purposeful %30, not much is going to change.
TenguPhule
Instead we pay them as they profit.
Yay us.
jake
Yeah? Well I had a conversation with my best friend and he’s totally for hybrid vehicles.
So we’ll meet you by the bike racks after school.
Also, yo mama so fat she go “beep, beep, beep,” when she backs up.
Tim H.
Hydrogen liquefies at -423 deg F. Propane at ambient temperatures. Nobody’s going to have a liquefier in their homes, period.
And why the hell would anyone use electric power to produce hydrogen to use in hydrogen cars? Just use electric cars and cut out the middleman.
Shygetz
How about the fact that hydrogen doesn’t liquify until -400 F at ANY pressure, so if you want to have liquid hydrogen you get to drive around on a giant cryogenic safety hazard? Unless, of course, you want to work with hydrogen as a supercritical fluid; in that case, you get to drive around on a HUGELY powerful pressure bomb in which the contents rapidly shift in density and have no surface tension. How’s that “fly in the ointment”?
Dennis - SGMM
The point that I was ineptly trying to make is that hydrogen will require substantial changes in the infrastructure. Pump hydrogen through a typical gas pump hose and you’ll lose some of it right through the interstices between the molecules of the materials in the hose. You’re also dealing with a gas under pressure which means that you’ll have to come up with a bulletproof method of coupling the hydrogen source to the vehicle. That method has to be usable by normal motorists or we have to train attendants to do the job. As for flammability, most car crashes don’t result in a fireball even when gasoline leaks. If a crash causes a break in the hydrogen system, 100% of the hydrogen will leak. That doesn’t mean a fireball either but it’s an added risk. Nothing about hydrogen-powered cars is insurmountable, it will just be very expensive.
One other thought; what happens to the atmosphere if we suddenly have a few million vehicles pumping more oxygen into it?
Chris Johnson
Hey, really? You just got my attention.
I have another compromise. Open up all the oil drilling in exchange for nationalizing all the oil companies and call it Homeland Oil Security :)
(yes, I was only trying to make Michael’s head explode. Free market bastard that he is…)
Dennis - SGMM
After all, oil is America’s precious bodily fluid. :)
HRA
I can see a lot of people here are much more intelligent on the subject then I and many more of us out here in the country. Yet, we do try to adjust to the problems now facing us financially. Sometimes we don’t have much of a choice.
Here in the supposedly grandeur of suburbia we are in a bind although we gave up the big truck and SUV for the small cars. Both of us have to make 40+ miles of round trips 5 days a week when the thruway is flowing without backups. I should say the backups are the norm. Gas is $4.15 right now.
Public transit here has been rescheduled several years ago to one bus for the am, one for the mid-afternoon and one for the hour of 5 pm. That doesn’t work for all. It only works for the city workers. Personally, I would have to get to the bus stop at 7:15, take the rapid transit to the south campus and catch a shuttle to the north campus. I will not even factor in the walking to each one except to say I would be in training. On the way back I would have to leave work 2 hours early to catch the 5 pm bus. I have done this in the past.
Tim H.
A national oil company doesn’t seem to have beggared the Saudis much.
Bithead
No. Look again. That’s an auto-feed.
Bob In Pacifica
I was going to junk the old Corolla and switch to a horse, but I’m a little worried about the oats feeding stations along my commute route.
Bob In Pacifica
On day one of Obama’s Presidency he can bring oil under a hundred bucks a barrel by doing two things: 1.) open the oil reserves, and 2.) begin an investigation of oil futures trading.
After that, getting rid of the Enron Loophole and investing in alternative energy.
This spiral in oil prices has been a shakedown by Big Oil. If our MSM only reported about all the millions of acres of untouched oil leases people would understand that this is just money in the bank for Exxon et al.
Calliope
Many excellent points have already been made to rebut this statement. However, one that hasn’t been mentioned yet is emissions. Hybrid cars are much cleaner than regular cars, and vastly cleaner than the SUV’s.
Air quality in Los Angeles has noticeably worsened since the late 90’s, due entirely to a million or more SUV’s being added to our traffic.
Getting people out of their smog machines and into a car that dumps significantly less, indeed, almost no crap into the air is one hell of a benefit to hybrid cars.
Martin
Well, hydrogen is reasonably portable. It’s not as good as gasoline, but it’s not too bad. The problems with hydrogen are no worse than the problems with electricity. In addition to battery longevity, discharge, etc. there’s a limit to how quickly you can charge a battery. If you need to drive two charges away, most people won’t tolerate an hour wait or longer for that mid-drive recharge. That’s the main limit with electric cars – they work great inside of one charge, but recharging is a big problem. Good commuter and local fleet vehicles, but not good general-purpose ones.
Like I said, we have hydrogen production at work and one of the few hydrogen fueling stations in the country. I’ll ask the guys that built it what the impact of this development will have on things. When I last talked to them about the current state of fuel cell vehicles (we work with both Toyota and Honda on them, hybrids, and electric vehicles) the cost of producing hydrogen was one of the big issues. Storage was another, but not a huge one. Reducing the cost and size of fuel cell stacks was another (we’re building test fuel cell membranes in the nano facility now to further that), and setting up distribution was the last.
The MIT approach makes fuel stations much more attractive to build. Rather than reforming LNG to hydrogen, you can possibly reform water to hydrogen for an acceptable energy cost. That’s huge and makes the distribution problem much easier to do. Every location has water, but natural gas is much more common in the west than in the east. Costs would be proportionate to the cost of electricity, it eliminates trading one fossil fuel for another, and the byproducts of the reforming process are more attractive (dumping excess oxygen into high population areas is a great trade-off).
Martin
Why? The reserves are for national emergency. There’s no shortage of oil, we just don’t like what we need to pay for it.
Bithead
Forget the reserves, people.
The best way to solve the issue is to get government out of the way.
As an example, Drum this morning:
He’s talking about “Sarah’s Law” here…and IMO, he’s quite right… LAws passed on emotion are a real problem. The law of unintended consequences ends up fouling things in the end. I do wonder, though, how many other things that can be applied to. As an example, let’s consider the anti- oil-drilling laws that popped up after a spill in California, to name but one.
Emotion is exactly what Gore, for example, uses as a tool to push the agenda for the supposed ‘global warming crisis’. (Have you noticed that everything is a crisis of late?)
So, how much damage have we managed to do our economy, and our future, because we’ve been goaded by those playing on our emotions, against drilling and refining oil?
And let’s spend a few few moments unpacking this post, shall we?
Already, you’re showing yourself as being disconnected from reality. Europe and the rest of the world have been dealing with high gas prices forever because they’re taxing the hell out of their people, not because there was a shortage of supply. I fail to see any advantage whatever in causing people pain, causing them to pay higher prices for anything and I also see no benefit whatever in chasing ‘alternative energy’ pipe dreams.
Reality rears it’s head: No matter what happens, we’re going to need oil to fuel ourselves for a long while to come. Meanwhile the never changing left wants to see us herded like cattle into buses and non-existent trains, based on the supposed European model.
But wait; does that model really work? A short time ago, a study was done in Europe, using cell-phones as tracking devices, to see what the travel patterns of Europeans actually are. Turns out, the reason Europe’s mass transit systems work so well is Europeans seldom go beyond 6 miles away from home, even for vacations. Thereby we learn the reason the European transit systems work so well is nobody bloody well USES them. A real advantage, huh?
I say, We most certainly can… and must… drill our way out of this nonsense…. always assuming we can get the left from between us and our energy supply… we do have around 200 years worth of known reserves… and we are finding more all the time. Meanwhile, what we certainly cannot do, is mass-transit, wind farm and solar our way out of our issues. Oil, and individual transportation works, and this other stuff the being pushed, are simply isn’t ready for prime time yet… nor will it be for at least ten years.. if it ever well be.
Come to think on it, now, …ten years…. isn’t that the length of time we were told it would take to get ANWR’s oil fields online, and that therefore we shouldn’t even bother trying to develop those energy sources? The fallacy of that kind of non-thought is now seen by the American people and they are reacting accordingly. Obama sees the numbers of voters, and knows what is what. He has begun to understand that with 75% of the voters wanting domestic drilling and refining to take place, they’re on the wrong side of the biggest issue of this election. Don’t blame Obama because he takes less hits on the bean than you do to recognize reality.
Chris Johnson
Ya know, talking about the ‘never changing left’ just doesn’t work as well as it used to. It just kinda calls all your ranting and raving into question. Next you’ll be saying our economy is fantastic and all we need to do is lower taxes some more and everything will be great.
People need to remember that other people can be batshit crazy and talking nonsense with all the sincerity in the world, even a degree of cunning sufficient to craft chump-fooling arguments- especially if you generalize and make things up anytime you need a bullet point or ‘Thus, the real reason!’.
Bithead, I find you implausible.
handy
Fine, maybe we should tell all those oil companies to start drilling, already!
Bithead
Ummm. Drilling where the oil is, is the issue.
I assume you’;re talking about the suppsoedly ‘unused’ leases? There’s a reason they’re not drilling there… Not enough oil in those locations to bother with. Another unintended consequence of governmental intervention…
Funny thing; THe real problems with the economy started showing up when? About two years back. What significant political event occurred two years ago? Well, for one, the Democrats took over Congress. Which is about the moment in time the prices of oil started their rise… despite the promises from Pelosi, Reid and company about how they were going to ‘do something ‘ about the price of gasoline. Remember?
Or maybe BECAUSE of their actions?
Here’s the graphic of the timeline.
Yet another unintended consequence of governmental intervention…
TenguPhule
So give the leases back. What’s that, they don’t want to?
What’s that, Bithead wants to pretend that the Bush Bubble that was floated with his express declaration of responsibility when credit was cheap is now somebody else’s fault when it went into the crapper?
Better trolls please.
TenguPhule
Because that worked so well with CAFE and oil production before. Oh wait, it didn’t.
Yes, silly California to worry about oil destroying their beaches and coast like Alaska. Don’t they know the Market will save them?
Much like the supposed ‘intelligence’ of Bithead?
What’s that? We held a gun to the poor oil companies heads to stop them from building refineries?
Oh wait, they just don’t want to because they say it costs too much money and it’s more profitable to use what they have even if it bottlenecks the system because what they lose in volume they make up in margins.
TenguPhule
Thank you, Bithead, oil company representative.
And Ponies! Don’t forget the Ponies!
Because it will make Baby Exxon cry!
Yeah, let those bears and caribou earn a little bending over for Republican Senators if they want to sleep! Because what’s a little catastrophic damage between friends.
Bithead
What damage?
A tip: Perhaps you’d better study how those things work before speaking further.
Yep. It’s called ‘Environmental red tape’.
I Will Remember In November!
DanM Says:
I’m having a pretty tough time viewing Obama’s statement as a position that can possibly be construed as support of additional offshore drilling. I’m trying, but I just can’t really see your point.
All he seems to be doing here is signaling a willingness to to compromise on a potential sticking point if that is necessary in the future. I don’t detect any shift in his fundamental opposition to drilling our way out of our energy/environmental crises.
What am I missing?
August 2nd, 2008 at 12:54 pm
Try viewing Obama’s statement without the kool aide. Then maybe you can view the statement for what it is a walkback from his previous statement. You see, it is Obama’s MO he has no core principle on anything but wanting to be president. FISA, I will fillibuster to supporting it. Campaign finance reform to get lobbyist out of washington and change how congress works to campaign finance…campaign finance…you talkin to me?
This is just like FISA, campaign finance reform and now offshore drilling—everybody is WORMing to make it acceptable that he is reversing himself on everything. Unbelievable.
TenguPhule
Yes, Bithead, you keep trying to pretend that a few photos mean nothing will happen.
Fixed.
And with that Bithead jumps the shark. The permit was denied because the company couldn’t even follow basic procedures. That’s not holding a gun to their head, that’s them turning in a sloppy mess and expecting an A for it.
Also note:
Oops, Bithead is hoist by their own pertard.
Bithead
yes, after all, are we going to trust Al Gore, or our own lying eyes?
Better trolls, please.
TenguPhule
Fixed.
Greg D
…and everytime I hear people whine about high gas prices I walk down the street and look at the posted price here in Kyoto to see that, indeed, everyone else in the developed world pays a huge amount more for gas that in the US or Canada. My Dad chats to me and tells me that he is paying 5 or 6 bucks a gallon and how it is cramping his lifestyle. Here you’re looking at around 8 bucks a gallon. When you’re paying as much as the rest of us, let me know!