Will Oil Be A Game Changer?

Does anyone but me find it funny that at the same time as a poll is released showing the public is getting tired of hearing about Obama, he decides to take a vacation? Talk about campaign by poll.

I agree with this posting, Pelosi has provided a trigger point towards the nationalization of this issue much like the '94 wave that carried the Republicans to large margins of victories. Substance is finally beginning to win over style.

One can only hope that the MSM is also noticing the trends, and begins to slink away from their savior and begins to hone their edge for questions during the debates.

I really don't mean to impose as I understand that my ideologies and thinking differ from many here. I don't mean to track mud and I try to respect the opinions of others. While the context here has credibility, it doesn’t dismiss the rhetoric and outright fear mongering that’s being presented by Republicans to con American voters into thinking that new drilling will somehow relieve their problems at the pump. Just a few days ago, John McCain told a group of bikers that “We’re not going to pay $4 dollars a gallon for gas because we are going to drill offshore and we are going to drill now. We are going to drill here and we are going to drill now”. This is something that surely you and I can both agree is utter nonsense. Wasn’t it just a month ago that President Bush said he had no magic wand? Now, presto/light bulb idea that opening drilling will make it all go away. Most everyone acknowledges the need for nuclear, bio diesel, coal gas, natural gas, etc. along with a need to drill. The problem is however that Republicans have refused to work out anything on the oil crises UNLESS drilling is included. They’ve basically said “look, Big Oil is our largest contributor and they want to drill any damn place they want and any time they want. We owe that to them because, uh, well, they own us”.
This “drill now” is an absolute scam and will do nothing to relieve the price of gas at the pumps. It absolutely defies any common sense in breaking our addiction to oil. People
are angry, scared and broke. What an opportune time for Republicans to do what they do best; con or scare voters into thinking they’re doing something for them when in fact, they are only helping their campaign contributors.

What amazes me is that the Democrats can’t even get enough spine to expose the Republicans for what they have done and have somehow excepted blame for the disaster we’re in. Let’s take a look at what happened when the R’s were in Power from 2004-2006. They repeatedly voted against cracking down on price gouging, defeating Democrats efforts. They promoted tax breaks for the oil companies. They refused to encourage better fuel efficiency in the automotive industry. (HR3893, Vote #518, 10/7/05; HR3893, Vote #517, 10/7/05; HR3402, Vote #500, 9/28/05; HR6, Vote #118, 4/20/05)

Wonder why? Perhaps the $8.6 million in campaign contributions from oil and gas companies with 84% of it going to Republicans could be a clue.

We’ve all heard the talking points explaining why drilling will do nothing. Even President Bush and John McCain have conceded that it will do nothing (other than a psychological sugar pill). Still, Republicans refuse to work out anything UNLESS drilling is included. Reward the oil company first and then we’ll talk. It’s just like almost every piece of legislation American voters have seen the last 7 years. It will make a fortune for a Republican campaign contributor at the expense, or at best do absolutely nothing for the American people.

It’s also interesting that John McCain has received $1.1 million from big oil since he flip flopped on his drilling stand.

Not to worry, Obama is not being left out of the big oil's deep pockets, since he has received over $400,000 in donations from them in this election cycle. Also, just so you know, McCain voted AGAINST the "tax break" for oil companies in 2005, while Obama voted FOR it. Additionally, Dems are not completely left empty handed either in Congress, since they have received a total of $3.4 million dollars from contributors giving $200 and up. That's not counting any money under the magic $200 level. (Source: http://www.opensecrets.org/industries/summary.php?cycle=2008&ind=E01). Yes, more contributions have been given to Republicans by them, but lawyers have given more to Dems, as well as healthcare professionals, etc. Each party has it's own core support base.

Obama wants to create a windfall tax profit to take money from the oil companies, the only problem is, that has been done before by Democrats and FAILED miserably. Of course Republicans want to include drilling, we need to get started on it NOW, so it pays off quicker. No, it won't drive down the price per barrel immediately, but oil WILL fall on expectation of new supplies. Want proof? Look how quickly it started falling when Bush lifted the executive order banning off shore drilling. And how about Nancy Pelosi adjourning for a 5 week vacation instead of keeping Congress in session to work on finding a solution to the gas prices now? How about what has happened since the Dems and Nancy Pelosi took over in 2006? Gas was, I believe, something like $1.89 a gallon then, and it's (locally) $3.67 a gallon right now.

And you want to talk about fear mongering or divisive tactics? Obama played the race card from the bottom of the deck, no question about it, even the MSM reporters on the Hardball panel agreed unanimously that he injected race into this election.

While some of you points have merit Eddie, they don't really address my issues. It's as if you're saying "yeah, well the Dems are as big of scum bags as we are" because they too have contributors.
I'm well aware that McCain voted against the tax breaks before he was for them but I'm not sure you're correct about Obama's vote. I gave you HR #s to reference in support of my argument. You failed to do so. So, taking you on your word that Obama voted for oil tax cuts (while later stating "Obama wants to create a windfall tax profit to take money from the oil companies", that doesn't have much merit considering we can't examine the bill you're talking about. The bill could have contained language that was utterly unacceptable. Are you grasping here?

You come up grossly short on your 2 key arguments; Reps taking credit for recent oil dropping and blaming Dems for the past 2 year spikes. That simply defies logic. Why not blame the Dems for the Iowa flood, CA fires, and other natural disasters that have taken place since they took the majority?

Your parroting of the infamous Robert Shapiro's reference to Johnny Cochran's defense tactics for O.J. Simpson, now regurgitated by McCain's campaign manager Rick Davis really has nothing to do with the fear mongering I'm talking about. I'm talking about exploiting people's fears and giving them false hopes by trying to make them believe they will benefit from giving Big Oil another gift.

Sigh...Okay, here you go...I figured since you are a big Researcher and all, you would be able to look at it for yourself.

First, on the Obama vote for tax breaks for oil and gas, here is the source:

http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=109&session=1&vote=00213

Secondly, on the windfall tax profits, here is the source:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=93194923

Notice how even the liberal MSM journalist from the NY Times says it may "be good politics, but bad economics"

Or you could read this source:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121780636275808495.html

Or even this one, which I personally feel breaks down the bad idea and provides the most reliable and impartial sources backing up all of it's facts of all of them. Even you would be hard pressed to ask for more sources:

http://www.taxfoundation.org/news/show/1168.html

Third, for the oil price drop and spike issue, I refer you to two sources:

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D8H7BTTG0&show_article=1

http://kudlow.nationalreview.com/post/?q=NjMyNDljNTQ5MThjNWE3YTAzYWYzMmZmNDVmMjA0ZWY=

Happy reading, don't wear yourself out. I would post the Nancy Pelosi "common sense plan to reduce gas prices" she put out in 2006, but there's a problem...She hasn't done it, all she did was put out a statement saying they had a plan, then wait two years until they actually started introducing legislation.

No, I'll not wear myself out Eddie. Your link to Obama was simply a roll call link and did not address the issues I mentioned. It didn't elaborate on the specifics of the bill. Simply put, I'll not dissect the links to confirm or deny and this is with a reasonable assessment. You and I can surf and find sites that will counter each other for days. Obama as well as McCain have both flip flopped on numerous issues. At the end of the day, what's really questionable is how consumers will gain, lose, or nothing happens. My stand is that only Big Oil will gain and consumers will lose-or at best gain nothing.. You seem convinced that reveling Democrat's shortcomings will somehow make the Republican's oil scam valid. Eddie, let's get real here. It's another scam, like almost everything that's been through this administration, for the corporations and not for the voters. Let me give you a link of today's NY Times editorial;
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/08/opinion/08krugman.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin
Better yet, let me paste Paul's entire post;

So the G.O.P. has found its issue for the 2008 election. For the next three months the party plans to keep chanting: “Drill here! Drill now! Drill here! Drill now! Four legs good, two legs bad!” O.K., I added that last part.And the debate on energy policy has helped me find the words for something I’ve been thinking about for a while. Republicans, once hailed as the “party of ideas,” have become the party of stupid.

Now, I don’t mean that G.O.P. politicians are, on average, any dumber than their Democratic counterparts. And I certainly don’t mean to question the often frightening smarts of Republican political operatives.

What I mean, instead, is that know-nothingism — the insistence that there are simple, brute-force, instant-gratification answers to every problem, and that there’s something effeminate and weak about anyone who suggests otherwise — has become the core of Republican policy and political strategy. The party’s de facto slogan has become: “Real men don’t think things through.”

In the case of oil, this takes the form of pretending that more drilling would produce fast relief at the gas pump. In fact, earlier this week Republicans in Congress actually claimed credit for the recent fall in oil prices: “The market is responding to the fact that we are here talking,” said Representative John Shadegg.

What about the experts at the Department of Energy who say that it would take years before offshore drilling would yield any oil at all, and that even then the effect on prices at the pump would be “insignificant”? Presumably they’re just a bunch of wimps, probably Democrats. And the Democrats, as Representative Michele Bachmann assures us, “want Americans to move to the urban core, live in tenements, take light rail to their government jobs.”

Is this political pitch too dumb to succeed? Don’t count on it.

Remember how the Iraq war was sold. The stuff about aluminum tubes and mushroom clouds was just window dressing. The main political argument was, “They attacked us, and we’re going to strike back” — and anyone who tried to point out that Saddam and Osama weren’t the same person was an effete snob who hated America, and probably looked French.

Let’s also not forget that for years President Bush was the center of a cult of personality that lionized him as a real-world Forrest Gump, a simple man who prevails through his gut instincts and moral superiority. “Mr. Bush is the triumph of the seemingly average American man,” declared Peggy Noonan, writing in The Wall Street Journal in 2004. “He’s not an intellectual. Intellectuals start all the trouble in the world.”

It wasn’t until Hurricane Katrina — when the heckuva job done by the man of whom Ms. Noonan said, “if there’s a fire on the block, he’ll run out and help” revealed the true costs of obliviousness — that the cult began to fade.

What’s more, the politics of stupidity didn’t just appeal to the poorly informed. Bear in mind that members of the political and media elites were more pro-war than the public at large in the fall of 2002, even though the flimsiness of the case for invading Iraq should have been even more obvious to those paying close attention to the issue than it was to the average voter.

Why were the elite so hawkish? Well, I heard a number of people express privately the argument that some influential commentators made publicly — that the war was a good idea, not because Iraq posed a real threat, but because beating up someone in the Middle East, never mind who, would show Muslims that we mean business. In other words, even alleged wise men bought into the idea of macho posturing as policy.

All this is in the past. But the state of the energy debate shows that Republicans, despite Mr. Bush’s plunge into record unpopularity and their defeat in 2006, still think that know-nothing politics works. And they may be right.

Sad to say, the current drill-and-burn campaign is getting some political traction. According to one recent poll, 69 percent of Americans now favor expanded offshore drilling — and 51 percent of them believe that removing restrictions on drilling would reduce gas prices within a year.

The headway Republicans are making on this issue won’t prevent Democrats from expanding their majority in Congress, but it might limit their gains — and could conceivably swing the presidential election, where the polls show a much closer race.

In any case, remember this the next time someone calls for an end to partisanship, for working together to solve the country’s problems. It’s not going to happen — not as long as one of America’s two great parties believes that when it comes to politics, stupidity is the best policy.

Andy:

All you had to do was click the link near the top of the page, it would show you the specifics of the bill.
One little click, must we do everything for you? Oh, that's right, you must be a Democrat, because you expect someone else to do everything.

I agree, both sides have flip flopped, my biggest concern is that Obama flips on EVERYTHING, he has a habit of making bold statements, then a couple weeks later, he is backtracking, saying he meant this or he meant that. It's a lack of experience on his part, thinking eloquent prose will cover everything else.

How about this? Since you seem to be so convinced McCain can't reach across the aisle to work with the other party, why don't you look at how many bills he has co-sponsored or worked with Democrats on? He is a man who will work with anyone if it is the right thing to do. I haven't seen that from Obama yet. This is a man who passed ONE bill in 3 years prior to this campaign.

Lastly, as I said in my first response to you, I KNOW drilling now won't bring the cost down now, BUT it will speed up the process. It is a given that we must break our dependence on foreign oil and gas. We can do that by tapping what we have, and starting to tap it NOW. Why wait? I don't revel in Democrat's shortcomings so much as respond to your post. You wanted sources, I gave them to you. If you can't lift a finger to read and be informed on your own, that's your problem.

Lastly, I notice you didn't disagree with the link on the Obama windfall tax thing. Good, because there is nothing right about that. It is WRONG, it has been done before and FAILED miserably. Might as well call it Carter Redux.

Eddie, HR6 contains much more than a vote for or against taxes on oil. Take Subtitle D, Section 156 for example. It helps assistance in public housing. Much of the bill pertains to improvement of energy and water-use efficiency and cleaner use of energy. If you read the entire context of the bill you used to attack Obama with, you'll find that it's another example of Republicans demanding that corporate gifts are a must in order to do something right for the people. It's a trade off Eddie. The Republicans had power and devised a bill that giving to special interest once again came first.

But Eddie, that's not the point here. The question of this forum is if the drilling issue will gain or lesson the loss of republican seats. I'm afraid it will indeed fool many people because they are being conned into thinking that drilling will lower the price at the pumps. They are voting their pocket books and the Republicans know it. The sad part is, the people are being had by the party that you speak so fondly of. John McCain only promises more of the same rhetoric, incompetence, and dishonesty that we've seen for the past 8 years.