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Welcome to Fantasyland

August 2nd, 2008
By JAZZ SHAW, Assistant Editor

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Yesterday, when Gary Hart delivered remarks suggesting that Barack Obama might soften his opposition to domestic oil drilling, I penned an unpopular opinion piece suggesting that the Illinois Senator might face some political fallout from such a move. It was even suggested that I must live in some sort of fantasyland for predicting that Obama’s detractors would label him, yet again, as a flipflopper for making such a move and that some of his supporters might revolt.

Well, Gary Hart clearly had the inside track on this one, since it took no time at all before Obama came out with a statement saying he would reconsider his domestic drilling stance as long as other, progressive energy reforms were included.

U.S. Sen. Barack Obama said today he would be willing to open Florida’s coast for more oil drilling if it meant winning approval for broad energy changes.

“My interest is in making sure we’ve got the kind of comprehensive energy policy that can bring down gas prices,” Obama said in an interview with The Palm Beach Post.

“If, in order to get that passed, we have to compromise in terms of a careful, well thought-out drilling strategy that was carefully circumscribed to avoid significant environmental damage - I don’t want to be so rigid that we can’t get something done,” Obama said.

It’s always embarrassing to turn out to be so wrong on a prediction, but in the interest of unity among the electorate, I’m sure we’re all relieved to see that nobody was playing the flipflop card or trying to make political hay out of it. And we can all be equally glad that none of Obama’s supporters decided to attack the decision or call it a victory for the GOP.

But if I’m able to take any small consolation from these horrid personal failures in prognostication, at least I got one part somewhat correct.

I would love to welcome Senator Obama onboard the energy train

Choo Choo! Welcome aboard, Sir! Your seat in the dining car is ready and the first round is on me. Now if we can achieve a rare moment in political history and actually get all the candidates to agree on something important to the country, who knows what could come next?



This entry was posted on Saturday, August 2nd, 2008 at 5:50 am and is filed under Oil, Gas Prices, Newsweek Blogitics, John McCain, Barack Obama, 2008 Elections, Energy, Politics. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Viewing 34 Comments

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    That is absolutely astoundingly brilliant by Obama.

    It essentially backs Not McCain but the GOP into a corner. Now if oil drilling is that important an issue for our national security they will be forced to accept compromise. If they do not accept compromise they will be seen as the ones who want Americans to suffer.

    In the meantime the debate can be debated, the details can be worked out and it can all be put off till after the election in which case either candidate can do what they want after the election and once again the American people get to suffer while politicians play hardball with our economic wellbeing.

    The GOP should respond by demanding a special session of congress be reconvened to see to this matter Immediately. They should put the ball back in the democrats court. They should stand shoulder to shoulder and say they are willing to make whatever compromises it takes to work this out and get the drilling started today.

    If they do not. Then we will all know that the GOP is just playing politics with drilling to earn votes. That they really dont believe that drilling will matter and that their opponents are correct. Drilling is a poltical ploy.

    Obama just hit the ball back to the GOP and the ball is now in their court. Lets watch the stumbling that they do with it for the next 3 months till they get beaten to death at the polling booths. Because honestly everyone is campaigning now and the GOP is in far worse shape then is the Democrats.

    This was ASTOUNDINGLY BRILLIANT BY OBAMA. They finally made a wise political decision.
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    Obama is likely to be the next president, and he has made a few mistakes and recovered from them easily (aided by a cheerleading media that is part of his campaign), but what I heard yesterday was from him, not any of his hired guns, and it was a colossal blunder that appeals only to the childish kiddies who love him.

    He wants to give $1000 credits to people for energy this winter -- a derivative of the Demogrant of McGovern, openly expoiting the vulnerable whose votes are most easily bought -- and he wants to pay for this, I heard, by windfall oil profits taxes, the lunatic idea that has openly been discouraged since prices began their late rise, and which goes right back to Jimmy Carter and his similar disastrous decision. (What's next, nationalizing the oil companies or at least refineries and putting Dem voters into UAW-excess-wage positions there?)

    So now Obama is doing the one thing he should least be doing if he does not want to repel more intelligent, reasonable, moral Americans who remember their history -- while it's a Big Lie aimed at the stupid that McCain is another Bush, now Obama is going on record as threatening to be another Carter _and_ McGovern!

    I was on my way to a book store in downtown Detroit when I heard the news and it (the news story) was the "tip-over" it took for me to get a book on something that might be useful now if Obama gets into office -- the 1942 NBER report on how to manage the economy with so much of the GDP directed toward government work (at that time, the World War II arms production). Vast new entitlements may not add up to the size of federal share of GDP in World War II, but they will eventually be the next closest thing, and on a permanent and growing basis, and with Obama promising to be a new McGovern and Carter, I'll pay attention not only to the chapters about raising vast new revenues through this or that form of taxation, but also the chapter or chapters on managing the economy through supply and distribution controls (which is what will likely happen next, this winter, if Obama is really going to follow Carter's and McGovern's ways).

    Obama's latest blunder has, if there is justice, put life into McCain and even put McCain above Obama. Well, that is unlikely given now inept McCain is, but what will Americans think? Are too many of them ignorant (exploited by Dems already) or just so tired of things as they are now, or desperate, that they'll gamble anyway? Illogical as that is, I suspect many will this November, and elect Obama.

    (Demogrants a la McGovern, and for that matter, a faint echo of Chavez? Windfall profits taxes? Obama really blundered.)

    Obama and windfall profits tax -- is there a "green" objective to this?

    http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2008/08/01/is-wi...
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    As far as drilling, yes, Obama has done it. He's said at least some drilling may be OK. Anything other than the rigid, idiotic absolutely-no-drilling is seen as a grand concession by the Dems by Dem voters, and is seen as an acknowledgement of reality by others, so the issue becomes no more something that can wreck Obama later. Of course, with the other things he just "offered" people (energy credit and windfall profits tax), he shows a return to the land of un-reason, and the GOP should annihilate Obama's "offer" immediately. Where is the next McCain commercial showing Obama and Carter side by side? ("WINDFALL PROFITS TAX") or the commercial showing Obama's $1000 credit and McGovern with the Demogrant, or showing "HOME HEATING OIL" and Chavez?
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    "Obama just hit the ball back to the GOP"

    You see this immediately! Yes, indeed.

    This is similar to when Bill Clinton fought with the Congressional GOP in the 1990s and put the issue back on them to where they were stuck with a negative-PR dilemma no matter whether they continued to fight Clinton or concede to him. There's no such dilemma here with the GOP but yes, the issue would now be dead as an Obama liability and it's up to the GOP to once again exercise the initiative. (McCain -- initiative: They seem incompatible to me these days.)

    When Clinton did what he did, putting the issue on the GOP, a friend of mine who was not more of a standard US libertarian type like me but more of a traditionalist and cultural conservative, well to the right (our boss said he made Limbaugh look like kind of pink) looked at me and we were both impressed and respected his ability.

    "He PUNTED!"
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    Reading what little I've read about the proposed compromise I'd say it's just about right. It preserves the affected state's veto power over sites within 50 miles of their coastlines (at minimum) and provides the revenues for renewable energy and energy efficiency projects -- something that has been a sticking-point in previous attempts to promote them.

    Jazz concentrated his speculations on how the far left will react. And I'm quite sure he's correct -- it will go over like a lead balloon. On the other hand, I think Neocon gets it right about the position it places the GOP in (and especially the far right). And if DLS's reaction is any indication, it's going to be a hard pill for them to swallow as well. Time will tell, I guess.
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    Congrats on your abilities as a prognosticator.

    I called you forceful writer. In case that was unclear in my complaints, I meant it as a compliment.

    My complaint in those threads was about your unpacked assumptions and your recycling of right-wing talking points.

    I hope you'll turn your lens on John McCain as often and as forcefully as you do on Obama.
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    The one mistake that the Democrats have done is refusing to have a vote and then going on recess for five weeks (of course it is during the summer). This gives the right of center pundits five weeks to keep repeating that Nancy Pelosi does not really care about middle class Americans. If the Republicans could have gotten a picture of Nancy Pelosi flying away in a government get with her extended family, it adverstisement would have made itself.

    Of course, the talk about the politics avoid talk of policy. Starting drilling does nothing for the short term. Talking about green industries does nothing for the short term. Doing anything that lowers consumption hurts the economy in the short term.

    Given the incredible short sightness on biofuels and the inability of political leaders to apply economics 101 to biofuels demonstrates that no politican is really competent to develop policy on energy.

    In the long term, the decisions made now will make or break entire industries. If the Obama Administration goes head with no new drilling, the closing of nuclear power plants, and putting all the chips into solar power (in all of its forms), the U.S. can kiss heavy industry, the transportaion industry, large scale grocery, the restaurant industry, and the tourism industry goodbye.

    If would be interesting to talk aobut how places like the Wisconsin Dells or Branson Missouri can possibly survive in a zero carbon emission world.
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    "I think Neocon gets it right about the position it places the GOP in (and especially the far right). And if DLS's reaction is any indication, it's going to be a hard pill for them to swallow as well"

    I'm not sure if you're misinterpreting my reaction or what the far right may do (which in no may may be always assumed to be a highly augmented version of what I have to say, obviously, since I'm not even solid right, much less far right). I risked sowing confusion by introducing a separate issue, Obama's well-to-the-left energy idea (energy rebate financed by windfall profits tax), but of course that is not in any way "far right" [sic] to note that such an idea is very well to the left and is like McGovern and Carter, in contrast to the lie that McCain is another Bush. (Obama's idea even brings back the gimmick by Chavez.)


    I'm not worried about the far right, which has next to no influence or power and is out of the picture this year. They're the only ones who present Obama with the hammer and sickle. The US public overall is not panicking in any way over Obama. If anything, they're refraining from criticizing him for fear of wrongly being called "racist" when in fact we will criticize him as a politician, and what he and his party may do once in power, not because he happens to be black. (What color are your hair or eyes? Does it matter? Arrgh. There is far more racism in the febrile imaginations of lefties, as usual, then there is in society, including public attitude toward Obama.)

    As long as Obama avoids the stupid no-drilling-at-all issue, and says at least some drilling may be okay (which is not saying it is okay), he has extingushed this as an issue on which he holds a failed position that may hurt him, because the no-drilling position is extremist lunacy. To say the obvious is not to be "far right" [sic].

    He doesn't have to say or do anything more. It's all up to Congress now and the states. (I'm intrigued by the related federal and legal issues of who has control, where, offshore.) As to alternative-energy sources, the far left's "we can and should convert NOW!" lunacy is simply more lunacy, while those of us who are reasonable would accept not only sensible R&D by the federal government (a boost to alternative fuels research already performed by it, for example) but even some interventionism. (Better transmission laws might be combined with aid to existing wind and solar energy production, for example.)

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    "If would be interesting to talk aobut how places like the Wisconsin Dells or Branson Missouri can possibly survive in a zero carbon emission world."

    The obscession with "carbon emission" (and carbon-content emissions taxes that are based on global warming politics rather than on air pollution that is a true hazard and cost to society) is stupid.

    Wisconsin Dells and Branson, Missouri? Well, people around them parts have voted Republican before, and it's cheesy [pun intended] tourism and country music, which often is aimed at a patriotic community (as the Dixie Chicks found out after their foolishness), and someone in a glass building will say it is not only poor taste, but "unnecessary," so Let Them Go Bankrupt.
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