Well they said he was running for Carter's second term, it just wasn't assumed they meant literally
Without a doubt energy has become the number one domestic policy concern with the American voters. Even as the other issues seem to subside the price people pay at the pump, consumption of oil, and the nations supply of cheap, reliable energy dominates the debate surrounding the 2008 general election. There the tipping point seems to be the issue surrounding Offshore drilling and an increase in domestic output to ensure that America is meeting its own needs as the crisis looms. With Congressional Republicans refusing to take the summer break brought on by Speaker Nancy Pelosi adjourned the House of Representatives until their is a vote on Coastal Drilling and Presumptive Republican Nominee John McCain using it as a centerpiece for his domestic policy agenda in his presidential campaign the issue isn't going anywhere. Even Democratic Presidential Hopeful, Illinois Senator Barack Obama realizes that.
In a unique break from his own party leadership, a leadership he votes with 80 to 90 percent when he is in attendance for a vote, Senator Obama announced last week, in an interview with the Palm Beach Post, that he would be willing to compromise on the issue. With strict environmental safeguards in place the Illinois Senator said he would be willing to accept Offshore Drilling as part of a comprehensive energy strategy aimed at alleviating the price at the pumps, a shift from his earlier policy platform of a new tire air pressure gauge for every American as he told them that keeping your tires properly inflated would save as much oil as would increased domestic drilling.
So how does the Illinois Senator know that it will save as much oil as Coastal drilling will produce?
Quite simply apparently, as the sole sponsor of the "Oil SENSE Act" Senator Obama is apparently an expert on how much oil is out there.
A bill that would strictly forbid the expanded use of 3-D seismic technology to gauge the amount of oil contained in American waters, the primary means by which exploration takes place, Senator Obama wants to prohibit the use of anything but the last known mapping and exploration used to measure the reserves offshore. What that translates into meaning is the use of maps produced during the Administration of President Jimmy Carter, apparently what Senator Obama believes is a reliable source for information now over two decades later.
So how accurate is that?
Well, according to Deroy Murdock, a media fellow at the Hoover Institute and a senior fellow at the Atlas Economic Research Foundation, in a recent column for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer "In October 1999, President Clinton's Energy Department evaluated the environmental quality of 1970s' 2-D equipment against last decade's 3-D technology. With the latter, Energy concluded, "Overall impacts of exploration and production are reduced because fewer wells are required to develop the same amount of reserves." In 1970, 17 percent of offshore wells struck oil. By 1997, that figure was 48 percent." He goes on to then say that with even more advanced technology available today, namely 4-D technology, surveying of these wells hit oil 70 percent of the time.
But apparently the Illinois Senator just isn't interested. In a policy that seems to be written with the old addage "Ignorance is Bliss" at heart, Senator Obama isn't willing to actually get the full picture nor is he willing to offer it to the American people. Why? Because it's inconvenient. It would call into question his rhetoric and his policies and would force people to take a good, hard look at what he's saying. That just doesn't bode well for him.
For a candidate who talks about a new sort of politics and a lot about change he seems content with using Jimmy Carter age technology and antiquated notions. But then why not? After all, he seems content, as one blogger pointed out, to tell people to use tire guages much like Carter told Americans to just wear a sweater when confronted with high energy prices, and Senator Obama's idea of a windfall profit tax is straight out of the Carter play book as well. So why not just go for the trifeca and continue down this path? After all, nothing bad could come of it.
Well, except perhaps gas lines and a dependence on foreign oil that almost crushed the American economy, but besides that...
The more that comes out and the closer look that's taken at Barack Obama's energy strategy and the Democratic Party's plans as a whole the more the realization seems to hit, they are either uninterested in solving the chief concern for American families or they just don't want to. Whether there are strategy motives involved, hoping to have high energy prices as a campaign issue, trying to tie them the Republican Party, or because they are beholden to the rather extreme elements of the environmental lobby, or it's because they just don't know how to solve the problem while keeping there base intact, in the prayer that if they ignore the problem it will just go away, one thing is clear, they are not the party to fix the problem. Without even winning the White House and barely being in control of the Senate and Congress for two years they have grown idle in power, ineffective in actually offering the solutions necessary or to even take a look at them.
That's not leadership, that's not even following real leadership, it's just, well, stubborn, selfish ignorance. Still they seem content to mock those seeking solutions and information, so arrogant might fit in there as well. After all, what else does one call it when suddenly a candidate knows so much more while remaining blissfully unaware because they are unwilling to actually look, fearful of what they will find out?
But then just a few thoughts I suppose.
