Are there bipartisan solutions for the oil crisis?
Hi. It’s Chad. We’re still filling in from BuzzFlash.com.
We know Democrats and Republicans agree on very few things. And oil should be one of those things. But is the oil solution so partisan that we can’t find common ground.
Republicans are like, “Let’s drill anywhere we can.” Democrats say, “Why don’t you drill where you already have leases and where you aren’t drilling.”
And Republicans want to drill in places that won’t get much oil, and certainly won’t anytime soon. And this story from last week where House Republicans stopped a bill to release 70 million barrels of oil — about a three-day supply — from the national stockpile. Democrats introduced the bill hoping the action would help lower gasoline prices by forcing the Energy Department.
And Democrats also point out that this has worked in the past, with similar releases in 1991, 2000 and 2005. And in two of those cases, a Bush was in the White House.
It’s likely Republicans defeated the bill because they don’t want Congress to have success, hoping Democrats will be blamed.
But oil, gas, energy conversation is an issue that impacts all Americans, whether we drive or not. So are there bipartisan solutions for the oil crisis?
July 28th, 2008 at 10:17 pm
Sure but it is to good an election gotcha button for any serious discussions between Dems and Repubs to be entered into until after the elections.
July 29th, 2008 at 12:53 am
Bipartisan solutions on anything are few and hard to come by. Pelosi and Reid are dysfunctional “leaders.” I cant bring myself to actually call them leaders. A feather can knock them over. Evidently, they have so many skeletons in their own closets, they fear opening any doors. The FISA vote was supposed to be a compromise! All it did was give Bush everything he wanted. Some compromise. In this Congress, bipartisan means the Dems cave in AGAIN, and the extremist right-wing puts yet another nail in the coffin of our civil liberties, our health, our environment, equal opportunity, etc.etc. You name it, this bunch will destroy it. Grover Norquist, esteemed crook and advisor to Bush, has said he wants to see government destroyed. By golly, they have damned near got it done!!! So, any bipartisan effort on oil will mean that the Dems give the right-wing everything they want plus more. Drilling in sensitive environmental areas? Sure, why not. More corporate welfare for Big Oil? Of course! Spending millions to squeeze a few drops of oil from shale? Halleluja! Any hairbrained, destructive, more “Billions for Big Oil” idea you can think of, they will rubberstamp. Why would they do that, you ask? Well, it does make me wonder about all of those secret offshore accounts that some whistleblower in Switzerland spilled the beans about recently. Where there is smoke, there is fire. But that story will be doused rather quickly…….Any more questions?
July 29th, 2008 at 9:04 am
From Forbes.com:
“While the administration argues that more supplies would help to bring down prices, U.S exports of diesel fuel in April averaged 387,000 barrels per day, up almost seven-fold from 59,000 barrels a day in the same month a year earlier.
U.S. gasoline shipments in April averaged 202,000 barrels a day, the most for the month since 1945, when America was sending fuel overseas to ease supply shortages in other countries during World War II.”
From Wash. Post:
“Campaign contributions from oil industry executives to Sen. John McCain rose dramatically in the last half of June, after the senator from Arizona made a high-profile split with environmentalists and reversed his opposition to the federal ban on offshore drilling.”
They want to control the price and controlling the leases does just that, whether they drill on that land or not.
A lot of what they export doesn’t meet US Standards but reaps a tidy profit from countries with no environmental standards.
It isn’t about partisan politics, it’s about profit. Big Oil will support whichever candidate helps their bottom line with absolutely no consideration for our economy or our environment. What can congress do? Pass laws that the industry will ignore? They have given up on that approach and now the industry writes the laws. It is bipartisan only in the sense that both parties are held hostage to the desires of Big Oil and both parties accept their bribes.
A solution? Al Gore has the solution. Robert Kennedy Jr. has the solution.
Even T. Boone Pickens has the solution. Alternatives to oil and conservation
of energy are the only means we have to fight back. However, I imagine the industry is gleeful about the current economic situation, just look at Canada.
The people are allowing their environment to be trashed by extracting oil from the tar sands because the money is too great an incentive. Big Oil simply offered the natives and the residents huge paychecks in exchange
for extraction with the promise that someday they would figure out how to restore the ruined lands and forests…maybe….we’ll try anyway….but in the mean time….get rich quick! Americans will take this deal too. Oh sure, we all love our country, our planet, but we love money more. They’ll beat us down or buy us off, doesn’t matter as long they get their way. Until we have leadership that cares more about America than profit and Americans who feel the same way, we’re under the complete control of the corporate greed that merrily led us down this path.
July 29th, 2008 at 9:07 am
Hey Chuck
New computer still giving you trouble?
Again
Great comment on the previous post. As ususal, you hit the nail on the head.
July 30th, 2008 at 7:16 am
The good news is, people are driving less. Unfortunately, that will probably bring down the price of gasoline a bit, and encourage people to drive more.
I can’t help thinking about Jimmy Carter’s term as president, and where we would be today, as a nation, as a world, if the US had stayed on course with his administration’s energy plan.
August 6th, 2008 at 3:33 am
alwayshope
thanks - had feared, that my comment would be understood as silencing or belittling women’s movement, because my way of thinking is so far away from mainstream, that the necessary “interfaces” are sometimes not clear/broad enough to allow correct communication
au contraire - i ask women to demand more and louder, to resist harder and to challenge all the everyday “inevitabilities” or “matter of courses”
i remember an Australian biologist (in TV, no source available), who wondered about women and their eagerness to submit their bodies to male reproduction medicine. He really said some harsh words about the male role in reproduction, but the point, i will never forget, was the “chain of life”
i guess, i had not known that before, because it surprised me to hear that all the ovums of women are created during their own genesis. Other than sperm, ovums cannot be created afterwards, they can only be “initialized”
because cells can only “made” by cells - and as programmer, i guess, that it is something like our “class inheritance” - you do not inherit/derive general classes from more special classes…
therefore, the chain of life can only be carried forward by cells - by women, not men - and can be traced back to the first cell on Earth - billions of years of life in every female body - that had impressed him much (and me!)
since that Australian biologist i thought much about “chains” - i guess, my understanding of information was really (to a not inconsiderable extent) “pushed forward” by that processual interpretation of reproduction. Later on it helped me to develop programs as interacting complex components (nowadays called “Services”), because it helped me to understand, that metadatas (DNA in reproduction) do not have that important role, as our medicine tells us. Yes, i had tried to program a system like the one of our medicine books, only controlled by metadata/DNA, where the engine is just an anonymous, redundant element, which can be ignored - but couldn’t do that, because the “power of process” is much too unbeatable. And because i - of course - first thought, that it was my mistake, i looked for some evidence. I knew, that if i would be “right to fail”, there had to be some example, where the job of the ovum could be seen - “through the metadata” - and i found the hinny and the mule (which looks slightly more than a horse than the hinny) - ok, that is far away from “a proof”, but it was a hint - and if you think of the modern studies about “reprogrammed DNA by life”, you see, that the cell, the “engine” or process, is much more important, than our philosophers/priests/scientists tell us
constancy, stability, space - is not the true nature of nature - it is process, dynamics, change
but, ok, that’s not the true point
the point is that we think of so many things as “matter of course”, which cannot be or should not be challenged, that our thinking is sometimes like a frozen sea - reduced, minimized, fixed - controllable!
“believing” in all that stuff, our masterminds tell us, makes us to really “good boys”, following blindly all the “daddies” all around in industry, politics and churches…
so, can you see why i think that women’s movement IS important?
It is one of the deepest settled convictions nearly all over the world - since at least 2000 years -, that women are “the second gender” - but for nature? In reality? It is “the first” - the redundant one? Is the male - that is the reason, why male competition can be so hard - sort ‘em out, forget ‘em!! (You see, why i am fan of brain? Brain is so pretious, that gender doesn’t matter anymore - Nature tries to protect human brains to an extent that it is even a risk for the reproduction process! => Brain is the emancipation of man)
women’s movement challenges this global “deepest settled conviction” of 2000 years
so if someone could challenge so deep convictions - (s)he can challenge all!
this is not just a hope - look around in history or geography
the role of “the mother gender” is everywhere an indicator for the whole culture
the more reduced the mother, the more reduced the culture - less sciences, less freedoms, less advance
less peace
for everyone
apropos “less”….
What happens at LCDC? Are we waiting for Steve?
August 7th, 2008 at 9:09 am
Again-
I will admit that I often have to read your posts twice (sober), but I would never suspect you of belittling the women’s movement.
-”women’s movement challenges this global “deepest settled conviction” of 2000 years”
Not hard to see why the resistance is so high. The “mother” and the “woman” are treated differently, however, which only further confuses any movement. Remember Steve’s episode about heaven and hell? Doctrine itself was the impediment to true understanding.
-”the more reduced the mother, the more reduced the culture - less sciences, less freedoms, less advance
less peace
for everyone”
Well put, friend.
And , yes, I guess we’re waiting for Steve. (Or for Chuck to make nice with his new puter.) Also, I think just the lame-brained turn this campaign has taken has made me less interested in Obama and , have I ever mentioned, I don’t much like McCain? The Paris Hilton response to McCain’s dumb ad was very good though and gave me a good old laugh all day. One interesting thing, I keep hearing “Indiana is a swing state” and it makes me blink in confused amazement. I know about 4 people who are voting for Obama and I’ve asked. I find more people aren’t voting at all. I suppose that means that the democrats here are more energized but I can’t find them. Obama is in Elkhart today and I know that in Northern Indiana, they hate Mitch Daniels, so his support may be the whole northern part. I’m so sick of the MSM trying to provoke a feud between Bill Clinton and Obama. I’m sick of the news people and their love affair with the old guy. I haven’t even written a poem in weeks because I’m just tired of the bull and the filtered, sound-bited, dumbed-down crap they shove down our throats everyday. Maybe when Steve gets back, he’ll be rested and enthused and inspired. Until then, please continue with the interesting posts. I’ll bet everyone is still checking in so hello Juli, Larkrise, richl, and where is iowa?
And Chuck, tell Scout hello for me.
August 10th, 2008 at 3:27 pm
Hey everyone
My dad has had shingles and it has really taken a toll on him so I’m staying with him until he’s stronger. No computer at his place (I’m coping as best I can) so behave yourselves! (that means you, Chuck)
Have a good week !
( try not to think about John Edwards) I know Larkrise has got to be bummed, I sure am.
August 12th, 2008 at 1:19 am
Hi, alwayshope I am sorry to hear your dad has shingles. They can make a person quite ill. I hope he is better soon.
I am bummed about John Edwards. Had he been the nominee, this skeleton in his closet would have been a disaster. I especially feel sorry for his wife and children. Elisabeth may have forgiven him, but his behavior has been extremely hurtful for her, I am sure. Here she is, battling cancer, and struggling to raise her children, and he takes up with some little tart that has had a baby by yet another man. What a shame! I thought John Edwards had more character than that. We all have feet of clay. No one is perfect. But, this is a man, whose wife is fighting an uphill battle for survival. It is the end of his political career, which is sad, because he had good ideas and cared about the little guy. Perhaps, he can be a force for good in another arena.
John McCains lust for battle scares the bejesus out of me. Iraq, Iran, now Russia!!!! The man is nuts. I dont trust him any farther than I could throw him. And, with my back, I couldnt pick him up. I need to limber up,though, because if McCain wins, we will all need to twist around and kiss our butts goodbye. He is a hothead, and isnt all that clearheaded. Unfortunately, this country is heavily populated with fools and nitwits, who will vote for McCain. They will be driving their SUVs down the road to perdition.