Right on Cue! Watching Jack Welch on "Morning Joke" hawking lifting ban on offshore drilling!

[flpoljunkie]

Bush is going to ask the Congress today to let states themselves decide whether to lift the restrictions on offshore drilling.

This is Bush's last chance to allow more drilling prospects for his oil and gas buddies before he leaves office. They feel the time is right--since they have helped drive up the price for gas at the pump with their stupid war in Iraq--knowing many people are hurting--and may just buy lifting the federal ban on offshore drilling.

We must let them know otherwise. We cannot drill our way out of dependence on foreign oil. We must increase our CAFE standards and invest far more in renewable and alternative fuels.

[nomaco-10]

1. He was on both msnbc and faux the other day...

commenting on the death of russert. He looked and sounded very ill. His voice was very hoarse and his color was sallow and pasty. He looks like he's about a hundred years old and on his way out.

[annabanana]

2. Wow! The Boss is front & center!

He must feel very very deeply (as in pockets) about this.

[greguganus]

3. Oil refinery construction set to start in North Dakota this fall on tribal land.

http://minnesota.publicradio.org/display/web/2006/08/18/ndrefinery/

[droidamus2]

6. wouldn't surprise me

It wouldn't surprise me that if you looked into the opposition to this refinery that it was being bankrolled by the same cartels that currently control the refining capacity in this country. This is pure supply and demand. When demand gets high enough or supply gets low enough it makes it economically viable for new producers to enter the market as long as they can get access to the raw materials. Of course in this case the current companies have such control that they can produce artificial shortages in order to maximize their profits. They will do everything they can to make sure nobody else that is not 'in on the game' already will be allowed to play. Though I think dependence on oil is the problem and we need to move beyond that dependence this sounds like a responsible decision by this tribe.

[droidamus2]

4. One thing

I think we play into the Republican 'oil parties' hands when we frame this question as dependence on 'foreign' oil. We should discuss the situation as a dependence on oil period. As long as we as a society refuse to face the fact that oil is a finite and polluting resource and fail to move toward more renewable and cleaner alternatives we are not solving the problem. Whether the oil we are currently using is foreign or domestic really makes no difference. Starting to prepare to drill offshore or in Alaska definitely is not an answer to current problems as they would not bring in any more crude for many years. As somebody pointed out on another thread we don't have the capacity to refine it anyway. I actually read that an oil person admitted the other day that the current price rise is not due to a lack of crude but due to a lack of refined gas (I think speculators have a lot to do with it too). Too many people want to look to the old technology ie oil instead of investing in and aggressively developing new technologies which is to say the least short sighted. Let's face the fact that oil is not the solution it is the problem and that till we put ourselves on a path to ween ourselves from oil we are not going to get any closer to a sustainable energy future.

[Donkey_Punch_Dubya]

5. Interesting comments on American Morning on CNN

Some bald guy was talking about how if we decided to drill offshore in Florida and other places, it would be 3-4 years before any reasonable amount of oil would be extracted, so there would be zero help at the pump until then in terms of prices. And besides that, this dude was saying that 3/4 of our oil is imported, and we could only hope to drop that by a couple percent AT MOST by offshore drilling.

He was basically saying this offshore drilling is a campaign thing, not a solution thing. He went on to say the best way to go about it is to limit the use of oil, not drill everywhere and risk environmental disaster just for a basically negligible improvement.

[flpoljunkie]

7. The "bald guy's" right!