No, that's not correct, solar and wind power can get us moving much faster than drilling for oil will, besides, it's the cynical oil companies that aren't even looking to drill for oil. They're very happy to sit back and laugh at us right now.

Do you honestly think they want to help bring energy prices down?

Come on, guy.

On the contrary, I virtually worship the truth.
But you haven't offered anything but more partisan drivel that divides people and halts progress.

Sorry, no sale.

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Not a day goes by that I don't see something that reinforces my belief that people are idiots.

The stats are correct. However, I am with you that both parties are to blame for this mess. Their ambitions of controlling both houses & the white house has clouded the wishes of the American people, & put them on the back burner. Congress no longer works for us, they work for partisan politics.

In my opinion, the federal government should get off of all the regulations & let America work.

For instance every state should have a say on what type of energy they want. Where they want their wind-mills, where they want to drill, where they want to build nuclear power plants, & which power plants to convert to clean coal fuel. We can't because our federal government, enviromentalists--who normally don't even live in the states they protest advance-- blocks us from doing just that.

For instance: When was the last time anyone visited ANWR? If one wants to fight off thousands of mosquitos in summer & freeze to death in winter, this is the spot for your vacation. Alaska wants to drill there, but the federal government has stopped them.

If the Federal Government would let each state decide on how & where to pursue energy, (meaning the citizens of each state) we would have green energy "yesterday", power plants being fueled by clean coal technology, nuclear power & solar ingenuity on every block.

The state of Virginia wants to start drilling for natural gas off-shore, but the federal government stops them.

The Federal Government needs to get out of the way, & let American ingenuity work.

Uh-oh, I think that nonpartisan statement just put you in the minority around here. You're supposed to say "IT'S ALL THE (insert other party here)'s FAULT!!I only partly agree. While it is true a lot of unnecessary and insane regulations are not doing us any good, there are a lot of regulations that ARE necessary.
For example, if regulations for lenders were in place (or enforced) that made them provide mortgages only for people who could AFFORD them, we might not have the gigantic problem in that industry we have now.
That's just one example. There are a LOT of others.I don't think environmentalists have enough clout with the government to counter the enormous influence the industry lobby does. The situation is obviously not as black and white as that.On the one hand, I've seen pictures of the area of ANWR the oil companies want to drill in, and I honestly don't see a problem doing it in that area. But, again, I don't think it's that simple.
Remember, opening ANWR wouldn't produce any oil for years and that oil would likely sell at the world market price anyway.

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Not a day goes by that I don't see something that reinforces my belief that people are idiots.

What ever gave you the idea that I was partisan? I am an independant & I will blast both parties!

I am not a real fan of federal government regulation, especially when it is not necessary.

You mention mortgages for instance. That's what underwriters are for, to insure & qualify people for loans. People did not do their jobs & we've ended up in this mortgage mess. The government can enact laws that mortgagers can follow, but as far as micro-managing mortage companies, it cannot be done by government.

Remember the corporate fraud during the market crash in the early 2001-2002period with Enron, Worldcom, etc. etc. We had a federal government agency in place that was suppose to protect us from that, called the SEC.

Therefore, many of these federal government agencies are enept at their jobs. We pay a lot of tax payer dollars for them, but really how effective can they possibly be?

Regarding energy--In my opinion I believe the states--(citizens of those states) are going to be much more informed about their enviroment & what will work for them than someone sitting in D.C.--that knows absolutely nothing about the state or area the state plans new energy sources or conversions. I would trust my neighbor to have more concern about the enviroment surrounding our neighborhood than the federal government. It's just common sense.

I also believe that our government has played pati-feet over the last decade with extreme enviormentalists regarding ANWAR & other proposed power plants around the country.

There is absolutely no reason not to drill in Anwar. If one takes a look at a map around ANWR. there are other drilling areas relatively close. So I believe the government (with the enviormentalists standing over their shoulders made their stand against ANWR & against the wishes of Alaska & the citizens of Alaska.)

I believe we are seeing the reality of this today. They really are not serious about getting off of foreign sources of energy. Their voting records prove it.

The statement--"well any drilling now won't be online for 10 years"--really doesn't hold water. We will still need oil, natural gas & propane 10 years from now. In fact, we will need it 150 years from now. So that statement makes no sense. As you know, if we would have drilled in ANWR 8 years ago, when it was first voted down, we would have that online today.

It just goes to show, that politicians say one thing to get your vote, & do the opposite. Yet, we are throwing 700 BILLION dollars a year to other countries for it, that could go right back into this country to reduce the deficit, invest in alternative-clean-green energy, yet we're not doing it--because of government regulation & political partisan politics.

It's always good to reference Josef Stalin's opinion as an analogy to your own.

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"The nice part about being a pessimist is that you are constantly being either proven right or pleasantly surprised.”
- George Will

I wasn't implying you were a partisan. I was just saying nonpartisanl sentiment like that puts you in the minority here. Slavish devotion to a single ideology is the meat and potatoes of political forums.The only area of disagreement is that I believe a LOT of current regulation is necessary. It's just too often ignored by the very people who put these regulations in PLACE, and it's all for the benefit of corporate interests.Simple concepts like making sure a borrower has the ability to pay back the loan is far from "micro management".
You should have seen the hoops my Wife and I had to jump through when we bought our house 25 years ago. They KNEW we could pay that mortgage, but it isn't the same now. The lenders should have been MORE micromanaged in this case, not less.A lot more effective than they are. But a lack of enforcement is not the fault of the regs themselves. It is more the fault of the agencies charged with enforcing the regulations, and they seem to be too heavily influenced by the very entities they are supposed to watch.But the citizens ARE concerned about their economy and their environment. They would probably be ever TOUGHER than the feds if they could. But if you have a coal burning power plant right over the state line, but all the pollution blows into YOUR state you would effectively have no power over that. Thats where you need federal regulation.I think if you researched the subject you might find the most extreme of the environmentalists get the least done. It's the news media that tries to make you think they have any control over the government.
Groups like the Sierra Club, for instance, try to quietly influence the government to enact REASONABLE regulations while the ones you see marching in the streets, spiking trees and sabotaging equipment are a tiny minority and are ignored by just about everyone.
That these small fringe groups are somehow controlling the government is a right-wing myth they peddle to ignite fear in people. The reality of it is the right in government (as well as a good percentage of the left) wants to allow corporate entities which have so much impact on out economy and environment to be able to do pretty much whatever the hell they want. And what they WANT is to make as much money as possible. If it's at the expense of the people, so be it. Corporate giants are NOT the caring, patriotic caretakers of their particular industry that their supporters would have us believe. For that reason they NEED to be watched, and closely.I've seen satellite photos of the area in question and have no issue with drilling there. My problem is again with the pandering to the hopes and fears of the American people by the shills for big oil.
The way I see it is simple. After seeing th evidence I have no problem, environmentally, with drilling in the area of ANWR in question. But after making that personal decision I don't just forget about it. I start to question things, like what will happen to all that oil?

Will it make the price of gas cheaper? Not if it sells at the global market price.

Will it be used ONLY for our domestic consumption, and reduce the price THAT way? No. Because the oil companies can make more money on the global market.

Why don't they do the "patriotic" thing and allocate that oil for our use? Because the majority of the oil giants are MULTNATIONAL companies. They don't owe us anything!

Can we force them to keep all the ANWR oil at home? No, because even if we did there is NO PLACE TO PUT IT! Our production is maxed out, as is our storage capacity, and the companies have said they don't plan to increase either storage or refining capacity. We do not HAVE an oil shortage and much of the price increases are artificially manipulated by speculation. When the price of (already bought and delivered to the gas stations) gas at the pump goes up because Ahmadinejad makes an inflammatory speech, and then it goes back down when nothing comes of it, it ought to raise some BIG red flags as to why the price changed in the first place.Agreed, and again the problem is with the people WE put in power.And due to global market prices it wouldn't make a damned bit of difference at the pump, IMO.
Also, since we use, something like 60% or so of our oil for vehicle fuel, a concentrated effort in this country, starting 8 years ago to change the way we transport things would have caused our oil requirements to plunge by now.
In fact, if we could get off oil for most vehicle fuel, the need for all the other things we need oil for could be easily handled by our imports from Canada or Mexico. Maybe even our own strictly domestic sources.Like old Deep Throat said, "follow the money". Whether it's lobbying, forming politally motivated, psuedo-scientific PACs or outright bribes, THEY have the clout in DC and not the people.

That, plus the fact that you have an oilman as president and a former oil exec as veep (who formed much of our energy policy himself, and in secret), tells me the deck is surely stacked in big oil's favor.

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Not a day goes by that I don't see something that reinforces my belief that people are idiots.

I'd like to see a link to something which supports the numbers shown in the OP.

I don't believe the numbers are inaccurate, but some point of reference for them would be good...

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Obama's New "57 State Patriotic Pin":




Sayeth John Drake - 10/13/08: "OK, you're right, I admit to LYING"

This is a very defeatist post, but just to focus on one aspect;

It will take decades to run power lines... huh? There's no choke point in laying wire. Nor is there a technical mystery involved. As far as the physical construction, we could wire up as many wind-mills as you liked within a year. The speed is set primarily by regulatory hurdles, and/or financial motivation.

We can look at current projects to see the time involved under current conditions. A Texas transmission upgrade was approved this month; construction is slated to be complete within 5 years.

Are far as I can tell, the biggest obstacle the nuclear industry faces is not environmentalists. It's the NIMBY syndrome. No one's in favor of living next to the power plant, or a nuclear waste repository.

Take the Yucca Mountain Repository. Nevada doesn't want it. To date, the plan has been pushed forward by federal government over local concerns. It's a false portrayal to argue that Nevada's opposition is rooted in out-of-state environmentalists. Nevada's NIMBYism is not unique - no other state been clamoring that "Hey, Nevada doesn't want it, but we do and we have this great site! Come here!"

PS: I'll add that I'm in favor of increased nuclear power.

Right.

And there are power grids that are evolving all the time now. Al Gore gets slandered for his huge estate and his $2,600 a month energy bill; but he's paying nearly twice as much into renewable and green energy grid. It's the point that the Gore-haters leave out. His home, having three working offices and 20 rooms, isn't actually burning more oil than a home half the size. And he's paying through the nose for it, which is why he's constantly upgrading his power sources with solar panels and such on his estate now.

He estimates that if America got itself together and worked on solar, wind and geothermal technologies to make the country 100% dependent on domestically produced energy, that it could be done in 10 years time. If we can dream of going to the moon without an actual strategy for it, and get there way before the deadline that was set, surely we can accomplish this task as well, creating new jobs, living cleaner, burning less oil, reducing our energy costs for the rest of our lives, and taking corporate welfare away from big polluters.

Even for Al Gore opponents, this must make sense even to them (remember, even someone you hate can be right now and then).Anyone here care to pick THAT apart because it came out of Gore's mouth?

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Not a day goes by that I don't see something that reinforces my belief that people are idiots.

Ask yourself this: Who wants to save you money?

The oil people need to keep you as afraid as possible of investing in renewable energy sources. They'll tell you every scare story there is. Why? Because they want you to depend on them like they're the dealer and you're the pimp.

Whose standing in the way? The side that wants to invest in renewable energy so that people stop paying $100 a week to run their cars. And save on home-energy costs in the long term. And live cleaner.

One side has gotten huge corporate subsidies, huge tax cuts, but the prices have more than tripled in 6 years.

But on the other hand, the more you invest in the other, the cheaper it keeps getting, and the return on your money is far greater.

We're at a precipice. Should we keep investing in an industry that keeps fucking us over or not? The people who want the drilling the most want to make you believe that they're helping you, but it's cynical; when's the last time the oil people really did anything to help you?

Excellent post, JM!

The oil industry has not only "bit the hand that feeds it," it's taken our entire arm off. It is time we "retaliate" by making the industry redundant. We know how, it's simply a matter of having the will to do it.

What's Gore's plan to supply energy in the short term until alternates to carbon-based and nuclear are feasible? It's all well and good to plug our cars into something at night and to be independent of oil. However, the energy to supply our sockets depends mostly on oil right now. The only currently feasible energy generation, other than a carbon-based one, is nuclear. Gore doesn't want nuclear.

One would be hard-pressed to find someone who disagrees with the idea of becoming independent of oil, especially Mideast oil. Even GWB envisions that.

The difference between the Gore disciples and the rest of us is the ideas for a reasonble plan to implement this independence from oil while keeping energy clean. Cuffing our hands with respect to nuclear energy doesn't seem to be the way. We need some band-aid energy source until alternates to carbon-based and nuclear are feasible. With the current technological situation with eneregy generation, nuclear and carbon-based are the only ones that exist. One of these must be permissible to the hardcore greenies.

Geothermal is there, but that puts too much of a strain on the environment, for the hardcore greenies. So does hydroelectric; that's unacceptable to the hardcore greenies. Wind? There is the not-in-my-backyard mentality. We do that offshore, we upset the greenies, again.

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I am an American. That's the way most of us put it, just matter of factly. They are plain words, those four: you could write them on your thumbnail, or sweep them clear across this bright autumn sky. But remember too, that they are more than just words. They are a way of life. So whenever you speak them; speak them firmly, speak them proudly, speak them gratefully. I am an American. ...a tradition