"Just As With FISA, Obama Folded Like A Cheap Valise!" "No? Really? No..."

Yup, really.

Bent over like an old dollar bill and took off-shore and ANWR drilling right up the ass: "ST. PETERSBURG — Barack Obama said Friday for the first time that he would be willing to support limited additional offshore oil drilling if that’s what it takes to enact a comprehensive policy to foster fuel-efficient autos and develop alternate energy sources."

And he seemed to smile all the while.

Mebbe you can't blame him, I dunno. The rightards always have an advantage in arguments like this.

They can aim for the dumbest matherfockers in the room. There’s always damn near a majority of ‘em around, drooling and picking their asses with side-arms. That cracker Adkisson was one. Tim McVey? There’s millions more. And they don’t do nuance.

"Way ain' got 'nuff awl. Way need more awl. Awl cums outtn the ground, dunnit? Ere's more down thar, innit? So drill more fucking holes and fill MAH TAINK!"

I get so sick of newscasts, commentators, pundits, the whole class who let the oil drilling canards pass right on by without comment.

Two things will bring down the price of gas: More gas, or less demand.

That problem will not be solved by drilling more holes, nor by selling more leases, however. Those expedients just benefit the Big Oil Combines--Exxon/Mobile, Chevron/Texaco, BP, and Shell, mainly.

The problem, and the reason –in scare quotes– for the high price is that demand outstrips supply. Not the demand for "oil." The demand for gasoline and other refined products.

Actually, there’s really quite a bit of it still out there, above ground, but not refined.

But there is not enough refinery capacity to crack all the petroleum we’ve already pumped.

Nobody’s gonna build any more refineries because (according to T Boone Pickens, anyway) world oil production PEAKED at least three years ago, in 2005, and there’s not really enough oil left to amortize the costs of new capacity, no matter the prices at which it is sold. So that’s nagahapun.

The politics of "energy" has become pure political demagoguery, and the goddamn gutless, brain-dead, captive CorpoRat newsreaders should be saying so…

But of course, in the Corporate State, corporate media are State media.

Murkins Jist Don't Dew teh NUANCE:

And mainly, the people don't notice.

That's because, for the last nearly 40 years, critical thinking has been steadfastly and studiously ignored in Murkin schools, despite the fact that it became something of a 'buzz-phrase' in the '90s. They talked about it it a lot, but at the same time, the School Bidness was selling 'testing,' which cannot measure and does not even acknowledge the existence of truly Critical Thinking.

Critical Thinking is a pretty advanced skill, and I'd bet 95% of all high-school students are not called upon to understand nuance. Mostly, they havent been since Nixon’s regime. His people changed the character of the ‘education’ establishment, fundamentally. The regime saw that the kids in the streets, opposing them, were pretty well educated. They could think. They’d been taught how in school.

The hegemons were determined to undermine that, and they did. I taught in colleges of education, taught students who were ostensibly, anyway, pretending to be wanting to become teachers, all of whom were born and schooled (I refuse to call what Murkins do in school "education") since 1970. I'd bet a months' SS, that not one 20 of them had ever had a critical thought. I taught 14 years.

I could even now go back and at least name from pictures the students I taught at LSU and Oklahoma who had actually practiced recursive, reflective THOUGHT. Probably not more than even one in four or five graduate students. It was terrible: People going into teaching who not only cannot/do not think critically, but who actually despise the effort. Unfortunately, I couldn’t flunk them all…

By the way, it might help, too, if there were some real disincentives to price-jacking speculation in these markets. I like the way the Chinese treat crooked speculators in vital materiel: Make 'em dig a hole, strip 'em to their underwear, kneel 'em in front of their hole, put two small-caliber slugs in the brain, tip the carcass int the hole, and cover with quick-lime.

I don't know what deterrent effect this has, but it sure as hell stops recidivism.

PS: There is ONE drilling proposal I'd defend, a law which authorized drilling for oil or gas in US off-shore waters or other protected venues, stipulating that ALL oil and gas recovered from those sites be refined in US refineries and sold to USer users.

Yeah, I know. It'd never get through Congress, and if by a fluke it did, the Chimp'd veto it. But that would make the necessary point, nest paw: "This aint no fuukin way about the USer consumer, assholes; it's about more obscene PROFITS for BIG OIL, and donchew fergit it."