What does coastal drilling have to do with the response to Gustav? Nothing

Well, actually, hurricanes put drilling rigs at risk, as the oil spills during Katrina vividly illustrated. So there is a connection; it just points in the opposite direction to what Bush would like.

Steve, you've got to drop this "stay classy" thing. It's over. It's played out. It's already an annoying cliché.

I know I posted this on the old iste but

The price of oil was $106 this morning.

Am I still crazy thinking that oil will probably go below $100 before it rises above $200?

GeoWBush has shown contempt for the law many times. Now we see how he justifies this; the phrase 'congressional law' should be examined. How are 'congressional laws' different from any other laws? Is the President not bound by 'congressional laws'?

Bushhas just used Gustav to segue into off shore drilling. I have read how the Repulsicans want to "stop Government to get off shore drilling. Stop the government for Oil?? The Oil companies must really want off shore drilling and the Repulsicans are doing their best to comply.

Am I still crazy thinking that oil will probably go below $100 before it rises above $200?

Not at all. Demand is either down, or not increasing as much as expected. Unfortunately, this has more to do with the world economy than any increase in energy efficiency. So $200 oil may not be that far off, either.

Seems perfectly logical to me. All those oil rigs abandoned this week are a stark reminder that what we really need in hurricane prone areas is more property to be destroyed. Bow Bam Pow! Didn't you guys learning anything from Iraq? Blowing up shit is good business. Plus, all the battered oil rigs are sure to clog a few holes in those democrat levees. It's a win win.

Peculiar use of 'lands' there.

Just be grateful that he didn't use Gustav as an excuse to cut taxes for his "base". After all, it's those high taxes on the rich that make God so angry, because those rich people always donate more money to their local megachurches when they have more of it. And obviously when God is angry you'll get more hurricanes.

That's the Bushie pattern. They used 9/11 to push their unrelated agenda. How's a little hurricane going to slow them down.

That's Just What I Said

And that's another big FU from Bush to the people of New Orleans.

Although I did hear some talking head push essentially this same point before Gustav struck: More oil rigs will = less impact on the price of oil during hurricane season.

I really hope the Dems call Bush's bluff. "Sure you can have off shore drilling. As soon as oil companies start drilling on the land they already lease."

... actually, hurricanes put drilling rigs at risk, as the oil spills during Katrina vividly illustrated. So there is a connection; it just points in the opposite direction to what Bush would like.

Really, nothing else need be said. This is exactly the point.

Jesus, Bush, can you EVER not inject partisanship into something? It's the thing I hate most about the little toad. He approaches every issue, no matter how serious, not by asking "How does this affect the country?" but "How can I use this against the Democrats?" It's disgusting and one big reason why I can't wait to see him gone.

"unusual non sequitur"

Well for Bush, that was pretty usual. Or as Bush might put it, a nonunusual non sequiter.

Got the point Steve.

Bush had to get that in before the convention. Expect much more of this drilling bullshit during the America/Alaska/Offshore First convention.

Demand is either down, or not increasing as much as expected.

Can we stop with this supply and demand nonsense? It's an election year. Supply has not fallen in the last ten years, and demand has not quadrupled. But oil companies have a lot more at stake over the next four years than the next two months.

I'd much rather American consumers be buying gasoline produced from American oil than from foreign oil.

Because, of course, the oil produced by those wells would never be sold on the global market.

Good Ford. There might be an honest argument that increasing production (supply) would drive down prices, but Bush -- an oil man, for pity's sake! -- pretending oil isn't a fungible commodity is dishonesty only the so-called "liberal media" could ignore.

RE: to be classy or not to be classy. We Merikuns want a classless society, one in which no one has any class, and we will follow the Iraq and the Russia to the gates of Hell and Disney World to prove it. Hell, the only class in my life recently was a court mandated safe driving class.

How many times do you think bush will say drill, drill, drill, in his speech tonight at the GOP convention????

Bush is Agenda First!

Get used to drilling, it's the only issue that's polling decently for the GOP right now. With gas prices starting to come down, though, (I just paid $3.75 a gallon in Stockton, CA) it's an issue that's likely to lose steam.

Get used to drilling, it's the only issue that's polling decently for the GOP right now. With gas prices starting to come down, though, (I just paid $3.75 a gallon in Stockton, CA) it's an issue that's likely to lose steam.

In unrelated news, market prices adjust themselves due to basic guiding economic principles.

Someone needs to educate the Cretin from Crawford that oil pumped out of American land (or off American shores) does not end up being refined or used here. It is loaded on to supertankers and shipped to whoever is willing to pay the most. That's how free market systems work, the ones these dumb fucking conservatives are always crowing about. Sounds like Bush might be advocating a socialistic "command and control" system instead. Stupid fuckers don't even get it, do they?

"Is the President not bound by 'congressional laws'?"

Not according to Cheney and Addington, he's not.

"Disaster capitalism" at work. Bush stepped right into Naomi Klein's thesis. Unbelievable.

How can this guy say exactly the wrong thing at the wrong time? Right in the teeth of storms provoked into increased fury by global warming, he advocates developing more of the offending form of energy right in the middle of the areas where the storms rage and destroy the infrastructure needed to exploit it. It doesn't get any better (or worse) than this.

Will the irony be lost on the media, and more importantly, on the voters? Will they become even more convinced that drill/drill/drill is the solution?

Maybe Bush is setting the bar low so that when Sarah Palin speaks authoritatively about nothing except oil & gas, that will seem like the new normal.

Can we stop with this supply and demand nonsense? It's an election year. Supply has not fallen in the last ten years, and demand has not quadrupled. But oil companies have a lot more at stake over the next four years than the next two months.

It's not an election year in the entire rest of the world, and the price of oil is set on the international market, not the US. The days when the big US oil companies could control things are over.

The answer is not offshore oil, we should keep those 68 billion barrels of oil, 12 years of oil, as a strategic reserve.

After looking into this for some time, I have become convinced that the answer is shale oil. We have 1.5 trillion barrels of oil in shale, or 300+ years.

Rush Limbaugh is very pro-oil companies and I suspect that part of his $50 million annual salary is PR for the oil interests.

Reports are that shale oil can be profitable at $25/barrel and, if we were to pursue this, oil prices would potentially collapse.

That's all they have left to talk about-- drill, drill, drill. It doesn't matter if bringing up drilling more offshore when oil rigs just got hit during a hurricane-- which highlights how risky they are-- is counterintuitive.

The American people need to be reminded tht Bush is an oil man, always has been and always will be. McCain loves the idea of drilling our way out of our energy crisis no matter how counterintitutive that is. Palin is more of the same, she wants to drill in ANWAR because it means more money for her home state. That's all they have left to talk about-- drilling for oil. They don't care about facts when it comes to this subject-- like the fact that if we could magically drill everywhere we think there is oil and there STILL isn't enough oil to be energy independent.

It's all a pretty big bet for them. What happpens if oil prices go down before November? Then it will lose a lot of its resonance if the conversation moves to something else people care about-- like health care reform.

There's a simple answer to this drill here, drill now nonsense. The Minerals Management Service (MMS) of the U.S. Department of the Interior did an assessment of oil resources available on the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) in 2005 at congressional request during 2005 while Cheney's energy bill was being debated.

According to to the House Natural Resources Committee by MMS acting director Walter Cruickshank, the OCS contains "an additional 86 billion barrels of recoverable oil (bbl) and 420 trillion cubic feet (tcf) of natural gas."

"The Outer Continental Shelf currently provides 27 percent of U.S. domestic oil production and 15 percent of domestic natural gas production -- most of that from the Gulf of Mexico. The areas under a congressional ban contain an additional 18 billion barrels of oil and 76 trillion cubic feet of natural gas in yet-to-be-discovered fields."

18 billion barrels isn't so great. At 2007 US consumption rates of over 20 million barrels of oil a day, 18 billion barrels comes to less then 900 days of our oil needs or a little over 2 years supply. 

Drilling off every tourist beach in America won't lesson our dependence on foreign oil. Using up the last of our oil in the USA will leave us more vulnerable to foreign pressure. If you don't want the Russians and Saudis dictating where and when out military can fight in 10 years we'll keep that oil in a strategic reserve. F-22s and M1A2 tanks don't run on ethanol.

I'm surprised that he didn't say that the way to deal with hurricanes is to cut taxes.

Isn't it cute the way Brick Oven Bill is trying to rehabilitate himself as an honest commentator? As if the readers here were as bad as WaMo's comment system at remembering identities?

Sorry, Bill, that dog won't hunt.

Senator McCain spent 5 years in Hanoi, completely deprived of off-shore drilling. He knows what it is like not to have oil.

During that same time, Dubya spent 5 years patrolling the skies over the Gulf Coast to protect us from invasion by those same Viet commies. He knows how easily that oil could be taken away from us.

These guys know. Why won't stoopid liberals listen?

Bush and the GOP weren't worried about drilling from 1994-2006 now were they?

This is just a new political football to be yanked out, Charley Brown style. Go ahead and drill, you'll pay for it at the pump.

This will only work on people as stupid as Bush is. Unfortunately, there are quite a few of them.

All oil is traded on the world market. The price is determined by world prices. Bush is talking like any oil realized through offshore drilling is never going to leave the insular loop of the United States. Did he learn anything while he was an oilman?

orange

Bushie is a MORON - to push his stupid agenda on this occasion and time is idiotic to say the least. I can not wait until this guy and his crew get out of town and out of the way to oblivion. The worst president EVER - that's my vote.

Gregory;

You will notice a common trend in all of my comments. They are correct.

If I ever decide to put up bad information, you will know this as I will post as 'Brick Oven Hank'.

You will notice a common trend in all of my comments.

Oh, I'd say a common trend in your comments is noticeable, all right.

"For this president that performed so poorly during Hurricane Katrina, to use another hurricane in Louisiana to promote offshore oil drilling? ... Just stop."

The only time in his life that he was of any use to anybody was his time in the White House when he was able to give away the cookie jar, the stuffed mattress and the kitchen sink on behalf of the oil companies. His ability to be the candy man is coming to an end and he knows that the only reason that anybody likes him is because of what he can scam on their behalf.

We are watching his last ditch efforts to give the oil guys a reason to call him up to go play a round of gold after he's finished his scorched earth run on their behalf.

If he gives them some more parcels to drill on, maybe they won't shrug their shoulders at the mention of his name when he ain't got no more parcels to, (try to), give.

W = Who?

You will notice a common trend in all of my comments. They are correct.

OK - Now I can't stop laughing.

Although, as one of those who has been begging for better trolls ever since the real Al and Birkel disappeared, I do find Brick Oven Bill quite entertaining.

Orwell: "Kind of like using the pregnancy of a candidate's daughter to bring up the idea of abortion. That is real classy all you progressives."
_______________________________________________

Well, there's chutzpah and then there's chutzpah.

Careful observers may note that Bristol Palin's pregnancy was announced in a McCain campaign press release...

...and that the candidates are willing to expose her to the press piranhas so they can score points with anti-choice voters. See? She's keeping the baby! See? She's marrying the father! We're so proud of her brave choice!

Well, gosh--it's not like there's any pressure on her one way or another now, is it?

But here you are to assure us that the ones really at fault here are 'progressives' who note the migraine-inducing irony of McCain/Palin touting the very choice they want to legislate away for everyone else.

Classy doesn't begin to describe it.

Wake me when Bush is over so we can tally the damage and begin to fix it. The Doofus Lame Duck has given me the answer to the question: when a tree falls in the forrest, does it make a sound? It doesn't.

"Reports are that shale oil can be profitable at $25/barrel and, if we were to pursue this, oil prices would potentially collapse."

"You will notice a common trend in all of my comments. They are correct."

#######
Brick: I wasn't going to comment on your stupid and wrong first comment quoted above until I read your second comment.

There is zero chance that shale oil can be produced at $25 a barrel, PERIOD. You are a fool or a liar.

Stay Classy stays classy.