Why does the "DRILL,DRILL,DRILL" crowd believe that the oil companies ....

[hadrons]

want to spend billions of dollars of their money to LOWER the price of their product at a time when they are maximizing profits???

Isn't this a bizarre twist on socialism except they expect multi-national corporations and not the gov't to help them out???

[polichick]

1. It's insane - the oil companies have shut down refineries in order to boost profits...

Americans are such tools.

[depakid]

2. It's an easy connection to make for a people who run on magical thinking

Jim Kunstler sums up the mentality perfectly:

Years ago, President Nixon nominated a legal nonentity named G. Harold Carswell for a seat on the supreme court. Derided by the newspaper columnists as "mediocre," Carswell was defended by a conservative Nebraska senator, Roman Hruska, who said, memorably: "There are a lot of mediocre people in America who ought to be represented."

Now Hruska has been reincarnated in Senator Charles ("Chuck") Grassley of Iowa, who said the following a few days ago:

"You know what? What makes our economy grow is energy. And Americans are used to going to the gas tank (sic), and when they put that hose in their, uh, tank, and when I do it, I wanna get gas out of it. And when I turn the light switch on, I want the lights to go on, and I don't want somebody to tell me I gotta change my way of living to satisfy them.

Because this is America, and this is something we've worked our way into, and the American people are entitled to it, and if we're going improve (sic) our standard of living, you have to consume more energy."

Like the true-blue mediocre Americans of the Nixon era, American consumers (as we like to call ourselves) have the representative they deserve today in Senator Grassley. He expresses perfectly the dominant thought out there, which is as close to being not-a-thought as any thought can be.

And this kind of proto-crypto-demi-thought is exactly what is going to lead this country into a world of hardship.

http://jameshowardkunstler.typepad.com/clusterfuck_nation/2005/11/true_blue.html

[Union Thug]

3. These are the remnants of the CEO/Greed worship that accelerated

under Raygun.

It has social-darwinist implications and demonstrates the love of authoritarianism by conservative voters. They want daddy figures to judge them, to tell them who has merit and who does not and to serve as their heroes.

Introduce democratic and collaborative power and economic relationships and they go nuts. They can't handle that kind of personal responsibility, even though that's what they claim to love.