Letter to use: alternative energy sources

After Al Gore's inspiring speech yesterday about alternative energy sources, I promised a form letter you all could use to write your legislators in your state and in Washington. Below is the letter I sent off to my U.S. Rep. a little while ago; I am also sending it to both of my U.S. Senators and also my state senator and representative as well. Again, feel free to copy/paste my text below to use as a starting point. (As I mentioned earlier today, I encourage you to alter your letter somewhat - legislators tend to ignore form/chain letters, so please add some of your own thoughts and concerns, too.) If you need to find out who your federal legislators are, click Here. On to my letter:

Dear Rep. Brady,
I'm writing to you regarding energy alternatives in America, or a lack of them. In short, we need more and more of them, yesterday. I vehemently oppose additional off-shore drilling on the outer continental shelf, or in ANWR. This will only serve to threaten the environment and prolong our addiction to oil.

I urge you to support an Apollo-like program to develop multiple ways for American to kick our oil addiction, including much, much more money for mass transit (which Congress has long neglected at best. or ignored at worst - I tend to believe the latter); solar, wind, and wave technologies; and yes, better batteries like John McCain has proposed, too.

This program should also include tax incentives for companies to develop these technologies and to build them in the United States, with no loopholes (and that includes cheap labor in the Mariana Islands - the Tom DeLay loophole). If any manufacturing or R&D jobs get off-shored by a company that's received tax breaks, they should be rescinded immediately.

I also would like to see Big Oil pay more for the oil that it is already getting, courtesy of contracts from the U.S. government; the 12.5% oil companies currently pay is PATHETIC. It is OUR oil, not theirs. It should be doubled, and the revenue raised could serve as tax relief, or better yet, to rebuild our crumbling infrastructure and as tax incentives for development of new energy technologies.

I listened to Al Gore's speech yesterday in its entirety, and I found it inspiring. As a fellow Democrat, I hope and expect that you will be an active, forceful advocate for proposals like his.

I look forward to hearing from you and learning more about how you will support alternative energy sources. America needs to act boldly and quickly, NOW, and more drilling is not an option.

Thanks very much for your time.

Sincerely,

RJ

Again, please take just a few minutes to write your legislators. We have to demand action, and more importantly, we have to elect leaders to Congress who are going to be forceful advocates of alternative energy and change. I will share any responses I get from my legislators with you.

Photo: AP/LM Otero

Another response to the Gore speech

I also got this response yesterday from a guy named Sean about my post on Al Gore's speech, and it's at least a little more reasonable than the response than the one I posted below. It reads:

It seems that Mr. Gore has changed his marketing message. While he still makes multiple claims that are a little hard to substantiate, he doesn't seem to be making the wild claims he did in An Inconvenient Truth (see http://globalwarming-factorfiction.com/2007/10/26/35-inconvenient-truths-the-errors-in-al-gores-movie-part-1-of-5/)

Now, Mr. Gore is taking the energy independence tactic. This is much more realistic and more people are likely to make "sacrifices" for the sake of energy independence if we state that we have to break away from the Mideast and destroy their power over us. He seems to put a lot of his reliance on solar energy though and we should probably include nuclear and hydrogen in that discussion.

Sean makes a good point here about alternative energy sources, and I totally agree - perhaps Al Gore is tacking differently now and trying another strategy. If so, good on him. I don't buy into all of the anti-Inconvenient Truth stuff, but it's certainly possible that Gore didn't get everything right in the movie. However, I firmly believe (as do many scientists) that the basic premise of the movie is sound. Sure, you can find scientists who disagree with Gore, and some of them might not even be sponsored by or work for Big Oil. But, those scientists are few and far in between. And as the North Pole continues melting as we speak, time really is running out for us.

I think Gore is moving to the next stage now. His movie and many of his speeches have sufficiently raised the alarm about the problem (I certainly hope). Now he's moving on to the Solutions stage. I can only hope our politicians are listening to reason. But, it's our job to make sure that they are.

More to follow on this, including some e-mails I've written to my legislators.

Picture above by Brendan Smialowski for The New York Times 

Debunking the bunk on Al Gore's speech

Well, the reception from Al Gore's speech yesterday has been pretty predictable in many ways. (A short clip from the full version of his speech is above - and it's the best part, where he challenges America to have 100 percent renewable energy within 10 years.) Those who oppose him for political reasons are still whining about his electricity bill while ignoring the real problems facing our country. After I blogged about Gore's speech yesterday, I sent out an e-mail to a bunch of people, imploring them to at least listen to Gore's speech with an open mind. Here are two very different responses (my comments follow each one).

Here's the predictable, negative, right-wing ideological tripe in an e-mail from an unidentified conservative who I know through someone else:

If Clinton hadn't vetoed the bill to drill in ANWR back in 1994, we wouldn't have such dependency on foreign oil and we wouldn't have the high gas prices we have now. I've written to my congressmen to 'Drill here, drill now'. We need to keep gas prices down while exploring cost effective alternatives. Food prices are soaring due to the regulations "forcing" the use of ethanol (ever notice how much stuff uses corn syrup?).

How can you take Algore seriously when he's the biggest hypocrite out there? The money paid for "Carbon Credits" goes to a company he owns. And his own home uses 20 times the national average in energy consumption (http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/GlobalWarming/Story?id=2906888&page=1)

(silly you...you know I have a soap box too....and I remember the Carter years and the misery index and I fear for our country (and my hard earned income) if a Socialist is elected president :-( )

Hmm - where to start...

First, I'm actually pretty amused that some conservatives can actually find a way to tie 2008 fuel prices to President Clinton. And just when I thought the Blame Clinton fad had faded. How silly of me. Conservatives have spent the last eight years blaming Bill Clinton for just about everything bad, all while George W. Bush has been driving America into the ground on many fronts. I'm happy and proud that Clinton vetoed ANWR drilling. The idea that ANWR can alleviate our energy problem is a farce and a sham, perpetuated by those on the right who think that a little more oil from our modest (at best) oil reserves will lower prices. WRONG. ANWR, even by generous estimates, would only provide a fraction of oil that American uses on a daily basis (approx. 21 million barrels per day, as of 2008). To wit, according to a statistical report from the U.S. Department of Energy:

The opening of the ANWR 1002 Area to oil and natural gas development is projected to increase domestic crude oil production starting in 2018. In the mean ANWR oil resource case, additional oil production resulting from the opening of ANWR reaches 780,000 barrels per day in 2027 and then declines to 710,000 barrels per day in 2030. In the low and high ANWR oil resource cases, additional oil production resulting from the opening of ANWR peaks in 2028 at 510,000 and 1.45 million barrels per day, respectively. Between 2018 and 2030, cumulative additional oil production is 2.6 billion barrels for the mean oil resource case, while the low and high resource cases project a cumulative additional oil production of 1.9 and 4.3 billion barrels, respectively.

What's all this mean? That we still need foreign oil, and lots of it, to function as we are right now with very little mass transit options, few explored alternative energy sources, and virtually no other automobile options, save a smattering of hybrids that are hitting the market, which still rely on oil to run.

There are a few more things that conservatives aren't considering, and that our corporate media (and Faux News) isn't telling us. One, has anyone considered that if we do start drilling on our outer continental shelf and in ANWR, OPEC could simply reduce production by the same amount, thereby keeping prices high? What or who is to stop them, other than begging by our politicians? The answer is, nothing, unless a Republican president wants to invade another country in the Middle East. (How much oil does Iran have again?)

Anyone who thinks that OPEC will sit on its collective hands and not lower production while we drill for more oil, thereby lowering the price of oil, raise your hand. Now go sit in the corner and put on a dunce cap.

Two, it amazes me that people think if we start drilling tomorrow that gas prices will magically come down. It ain't happenin', capt'n. These people (like the e-mailer above) who write their elected legislators demanding that we "drill here, drill now" don't realize that it's only going to line the pockets of Big Oil and the politicians they support (and we know who most of them are: G-O-P), and also destroy the environment in the process. It's just one more example on a tragically long list of ways that Republicans convince people to vote against their economic (and environmental) self interests.

Big Oil is NOT friendly to the environment, and there are many, many examples, most notably the Exxon Valdez. Sickeningly enough, ExxonMobile has fought in the courts tooth and nail the people whose livelihoods the company destroyed, refusing to make adequate restitution. So, should we open up a pristine refuge for Big Oil to come in and rape the land? How about, NO!?! No way. Big Oil has proven time and time again to be environmentally unfriendly (to be kind), yet now it claims it can extract oil from ANWR "in environmentally sensitive ways." (A line that President Bush happily pimps on TV, over and over and over.) That just sounds good for the political argument to turn our land over to Big Oil to be raped and pillaged.

Three, I seldom hear this argument voiced, but it's our oil, and by our I mean citizens of the United States - it's not Big Oil's. Currently, the oil companies pay the U.S. Government 12.5 percent of the oil's market value to get it out of the ground. If a law does get passed allowing Big Oil access to ANWR & the outer continental shelf, that rate should be doubled, and the money should go entirely toward development of alternative energy sources. What's more, a law should be passed imposing strict fines on the oil companies should they have an oil spill. What a novel concept - the polluter pays, not the taxpayer. In the last 30 years (since Reagan took office) - it's been the taxpayers who have largely been paying for corporate environmental disasters, not the polluter. That's an outrage of Biblical proportions.

As far as Al Gore and his electricity bill, I'm not going to waste a whole lot more time on it here, as I've blogged about this before, but I will repeat a few things (Note: it's "Al Gore," not "Algore," an elementary smear perpetuated by drug addict Rush Limbaugh, the uneducated Sean Hannity, and the asinine Newt Gingrich. It's sort of like saying the "Democrat Party" in lieu of the "Democratic Party," a McCarthy-era smear every bit as stupid and childish):

1. Gore has publicly stated that he purchases renewable energy and has taken many steps to reduce his carbon footprint, including putting up solar panels on his mansion in Tennessee, and I believe him. Hey, if the guy has one solar panel, it's one more than the White House has. But, the White House DID have solar panels when Jimmy Carter was president, but Reagan had them taken down. How stupid does that look, in hindsight?

2. The entire faux Gore Electricity Bill "story" has been endlessly flogged and pimped by a group called the Tennessee Center for Policy Research, a right-wing funded group that has been out to smear Gore for years now, specifically the day after his movie, An Inconvenient Truth, won two Oscars. But, I'm sure the timing was entirely coincidental, right? Anyway, read more about the myths behind Gore's electricity bill Here and Here.

3. Quite frankly, I don't care if Gore criss-crosses the globe in a 747 by himself - he's done more to raise awareness about global warming in the last two years than George W. Bush (or his father) did in three presidential administrations.

4. It's tragically hilarious that President Bush went out of his way on television a few days ago to say that he would NOT encourage Americans to conserve energy, that it's "not his place to do that." Unreal. Like it would be a bad thing for the president to set an example for the American people. Then again, why start now?

5. One more thing about oil spills - the right has perpetuated the myth total lie that there were no oil spills during Hurricane Katrina. I will write more about this in a bit - it warrants a separate post, but it's absolutely, 100 percent FALSE. This is yet another blatant example of the right-wing media's strategy of repeating a lie over and over, hoping that people will believe it if they hear it often enough. Sell that crap to the tourists, because I ain't buyin' it.

To be fair, I will say this about the e-mail above - she brings up two points that I sort of agree with, so there is some common ground.

First, ethanol is NOT the answer - I totally agree. Burning food for fuel is a monumentally stupid idea. But, it's not Gore who has been pimping ethanol, it's been President Bush. Spend 15 minutes on YouTube and you can find plenty of Bush speeches where he's talking so favorably about ethanol, you'd think we have enough corn to power the entire planet.

Second, I've never been a big fan of carbon credits, but I don't yet know too much about it. However, I'm not keen on giving a corporation my money, with which it promises to "plant a tree" or something of the like. I'll make my own decisions about how I help the environment, thanks very much. Hey, I may be a big fan of Al Gore (notice the spelling), but I'm not slavishly devoted to every idea he has. Just most of them. And I'm hearing more ideas and bold goals come out of his mouth about the environment than I've heard from Bush in 7+ years, but I'm repeating myself. (But that point bears repeating, to be sure.)

However, if Gore chooses to invest in a carbon credit company, so what? I'm sure he's invested in a great deal of "green" companies. How is that a bad thing? People who accuse him of promoting green ideas because he owns stock in some innovative green companies are missing the point, and are stuck in a Rush Limbaugh-like drug-induced haze, where being critical of Al Gore is supposed to be the right's answer to his innovative ideas, as well as our energy problems.

Speaking of investments, I guess the conservative e-mailer above has never heard of Halliburton, a company headed by Dick Cheney until he became vice president, and also the same company that's received no-bid contract after no-bid contract in Iraq. (Also a company that recently moved its world headquarters to the Middle East, away from prying eyes in the U.S. Anyone care to bet how much cash Cheney is lavished with from the company once he leaves office?) Halliburton has made hundreds of millions during this administration, due in no small part to its connections at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.

And finally, I got a kick out of this line from the e-mail above: I remember the Carter years and the misery index. ... (Read: Hey, you stupid kid, I know more than you because I've been around longer.) Please - get a grip. What's more, turn off Limbaugh, Hannity, O'Lielly and their ilk and get some real news. Here's a few recent news items that this person may have missed: Consumer prices jumped 1.2 percent in June, the biggest one-month jump since another Republican recession, circa 1982. And a recent Washington Post poll revealed that consumer confidence is at a 16-year low, the lowest since 1992, another year of a Republican recession. But hey, let's not facts get in the way.

I also laugh and laugh at Repubes bringing up Carter whenever they get the chance, including McCain, who impressed no one with the witless remark, "Obama keeps saying I'm running for a third Bush term, but it sounds like he's running for Jimmy Carter's second term." Funny how McCain never mentions the eight years of President Clinton, which were mostly a time of economic growth. If Jimmy Carter's all McCain's got, he's going to have the look of a candidate who's going to get his ass kicked this November.

I'll bring up the other e-mail shortly in a separate post.

Gore's speech on the env't a call to arms

Above is Al Gore's speech on the environment that he delivered earlier today at the Daughters of the American Revolution Hall in Washington, D.C. (It's a little over 27:00 long, but it's well worth a close listen.)

Gore was no bore - he cut right to the chase not long after taking the stage: "We're borrowing money from China to buy oil from the Persian Gulf to burn it in ways that destroy the planet. Every bit of that's got to change."

Then Gore dropped a whopper: "Today I challenge our nation to commit to producing 100 percent of our electricity from renewable energy and truly clean carbon-free sources within 10 years." Woot! It's about time someone said it.

Now that is called political courage. Too bad it's coming from a former politician, but I'll take whatever I can get. (How long do you think it will take before the next, trite Al Gore Electricity Bill story will make headlines? Drudge is probably lubing himself up right now.)

Many, many people have expressed to me the opinion that Gore can make a much bigger difference outside of our government than in it, and up until now, I've disagreed, sometimes vehemently. But, those people were right - Gore is no longer constrained by the endless, incessant deal making and bargaining that hamstrings our political leaders in Washington.

The minute I heard his proposal that we should be using "carbon-free sources within 10 years," I yelled... well, I won't tell you what I yelled, but it's about time someone take an aggressive stance toward cutting fossil fuels instead of doing a political dance and just enough to get a few more votes.

Color me underfreakingwhelmed when I hear our politicians in Washington patting themselves on the back (and more recently, the G8 leaders) by pledging to cut greenhouse gases in half by 2050. BFD. We need a much more aggressive approach to a problem that threatens every living thing on this planet.

I've said it many times, and it bears repeating here - I'm sick and tired of hearing global warming deniers (or selfish people who flat-out don't care) bring up India and China whenever the topic of global warming comes up. I guess American Leadership is a concept that's completely foreign to them. Maybe, just maybe, if China and India see us taking an aggressive approach to this problem, we will kick the last leg out from under their platforms of resistance, and more pressure can be brought to bear on them to curb their fossil fuel consumption.

Gore echoed this sentiment during his speech, and I had a big smile on my face when I heard him say it (At around the 24:20 mark of the speech):

...in fact, we must move first, [Emphasis his] because that's the key for getting other to follow, and moving first is in our own national interest.

And it's people like Gore who are going to help get it done. Part of me hopes that Gore is a part of a would-be Obama administration, & part of me hopes not, because that just gives the Grand Old Polluters ammunition; as Bill Maher said during his Decider show last year, when the GOP attacks Gore, they unfortunately sometimes succeed in poisoning the debate on global warming.

In a show of bipartisanship, I was happy to hear Gore mention Rep. Bob Barr, the Libertarian Party's presidential candidate. It's worth noting that Barr historically was no friend of the Clinton administration, to put it mildly. But, Gore seems to be moving above politics now, at least to a point. He's not completely bipartisan right now, nor can he be, especially when the lion's share of green legislators in Congress have a "D" after their names.

I'm very proud to have cast my vote for Gore in 2000, and I hope and pray that he does some day decide to take the plunge and run for president again. He's certainly young enough to do it, but for now, I hope he continues to give speeches like the one above while continuing to make a difference outside of government. I also can't help but wonder what sort of country we'd be living in had the Supreme Court not put a stop to the Florida recounts in the fall of 2000.

I urge all of you to do three things after watching this video:

1. Write your elected leaders and implore them to back the Gore plan to aggressively develop alternative energy sources. Pledging to halve our emissions by 2050 is no plan at all. (I'll be sharing my letters to my elected legislators shortly.)

2. Look at what you consume, use and throw away, and make the move to greener products where you can, and recycle anything that can be recycled. Don't buy into the bunk that "one person can't make a difference." Imagine if everyone in China had that attitude? That would amount to 1.5 billion bad attitudes.

3. Visit the We Can Solve It homepage for more ideas on what you can do, including this page to receive e-mail updates from the site.

CNN points out McCain's oil flip-flop

This one is sweeter than light-sweet crude oil - CNN's Dana Bash pointing out John McCain's 180-degree reversal about drilling for oil off our coasts.

When I first saw this footage, I uttered out loud, "Wow." Finally, the press is starting to dig into McCain's many contradictions. His reversal on Big Oil exploration on our coasts is one example; his reversal on the Bush tax cuts is another. It's no surprise that running for president can go pretty far in modifying one's views, and McCain embodies that, to a T.

This all but signals an end (as Blitzer notes) of McSame's chances in The Golden State, and it will no doubt hurt his chances in Florida, too. Just how much remains to be seen, but there's no doubt that it will have an effect.

Hey, there's 138 days until the election, and that's plenty of time for McCain to reverse his opinion yet again, so stay tuned.

The bottom line is that oil is so 20th century - if that's McCain's solution to our energy problems, that Obama should take full advantage of McCain's myopia and use it as a political cudgel to do lots of damage.

But, Obama needs more than simply rhetoric on this issue - he needs a bold alternative energy plan. I think I'll write his campaign later today to urge him on.

One final note about this piece - McCain seems to have a Jimmy Carter fetish lately, which is beyond lame. Last week, in response to Obama calling a McCain victory a "third Bush term," McCain said it sounded as if Obama is "running for Jimmy Carter's second term." And Republicans wonder why McCain doesn't connect with younger voters, many of whom weren't even alive when Jimmy Carter left office in January 1981. Sure McSame, keep putting Carter down - it sounds so... so... contemporary.

Also, history shows that Carter was a leading proponent of energy conservation, even going so far as to install solar panels on the roof of the White House. He also gave a very famous speech in 1979 about the energy crisis in this country, which could be given again today almost verbatim, and it would still be applicable. (Please stick with the video below - I know the audio is bad, but it's only about a minute long - turn up your volume) ...

A pretty sage prophesy, at it turned out. Would Carter have really turned America around and got us off of our foreign oil addiction? We'll never know, but he at least addressed the issue. He never had a chance to carry out his plans, as he was defeated in the fall of 1980, but at least he discussed the issue, which is more than his successor Ronald Reagan did during his eight years in the White House. In fact, almost immediately after moving into the White House, Reagan had the solar panels removed from the building's rooftop.

I'm not naïve enough to believe that Congressional Democrats, along with President Clinton, deserve some of the blame about the energy crisis we are mired in. They certainly do share in the blame. But, the fact is that for 20 our of the last 28 years, a Republican has sat in the White House, and all three of those presidents have offered zero leadership on the issue of alternative energy technologies, including President George W. Bush.

Where am I going with this? McCain wants to drill more, threaten our coasts, and line the pockets of Big Oil. This is NOT the answer to our energy crisis.

I hope Obama comes up with a far and wide-reaching plan for combating this energy crisis, a crisis that will not go away, no matter how much we want it to. This crisis threatens our economy, our way of life, and our country's prosperity (or should I say prosperity in memory, because God only knows we haven't had much recently).

Get going, Barack - merely criticizing McCain's absurd proposals is not nearly enough - we need to hear what your aggressive, bold and sustainable solutions are to our addiction to foreign oil.

Oh, and way to go, CNN. Recently, I haven't had much reason to type that, but pointing out McCain's inconsistencies (to be kind) regarding energy policy is a start to what the network ought to be doing from now until the election.

Hell, I wish CNN would go more liberal. They've been called it for years, so they might as well live up to it now and act as a counter-balance to the detestable Fox "News."

Update: McCain doesn't even know his own energy policy. From his press conference yesterday:

QUESTION: The European Union has set mandatory targets on renewable energy. Is that something you would consider in a McCain administration? [...]

McCAIN: Sure. I believe in the cap-and-trade system, as you know. I would not at this time make those — impose a mandatory cap at this time. But I do believe that we have to establish targets for reductions of greenhouse gas emissions over time, and I think those can be met.

Oops. Crooks & Liars has the rest:

As Kate Sheppard explained, McCain new position is "completely out of line with his own proposal for a cap-and-trade scheme, both the plan he proposed with Joe Lieberman last year and his own presidential plan, released last month. They both would, by nature, be mandatory — hence the 'cap' in the name."

In other words, McCain doesn't understand his own policy. Or, as hilzoy noted, "The best you can say for McCain, on this point, is that he is completely unfamiliar with what is supposed to be one of his signature issues. Not knowing what 'mandatory cap' means, in this context, is like not knowing what a 'strike' is in baseball."

I love it.

McCain needs to take a long look in the mirror & be honest with himself, which would go something like this: "Well, my friends, it looks like I need to go back and study my proposals, which have been released on the Internet, before I go make an ass out of myself again."

:o)

Brave New Films on McCain's oil love affair

Brave New Films has come up with another installment in its series, The Real McCain, which outlines John McCain's intimate relationship with Big Oil.

McCain's babbling about 21 billion barrels of oil that is untapped along our shores sounds good for the headlines and for everyone who's angry for paying $4+ per gallon, but the math doesn't hold up. The US consumes about 20 million barrels of oil a day, which translates to 7.3 billion barrels of oil per year. That's a little less than three years' worth of oil. And the great fallacy of all of this oil that McCain (and President Bush) now says we need to drill for is that it won't reach the market for years to come.

What's more, a new oil refinery hasn't been built in this country for over 30 years, so even if more oil comes in, the supply wouldn't increase, because oil companies refuse to increase refining capacity, and our bought-and-paid-for government won't force Big Oil's hand to build more capacity. Even more outrageous is that these oil companies have had tens of billions of dollars in profit during the last 2-3 years, and our government continues to turn a blind eye to the oil companies' willful raping of the American taxpayer because of Big Oil's campaign contributions.

Perhaps my favorite aspect of Big Oil's push to drill on our coasts and in ANWR is how they claim that the drilling will be done in an "environmentally sensitive way." What a joke. I've said it before and I've said it again - I've got two words: Exxon Valdez. Our government had better not risk our coasts and our tourism economies to drill for oil. The consequences could be disastrous.

I also think it's outrageous that oil companies only pay the U.S. Government 12.5 percent of the oil's market value. That's complete b.s. - the government should double it to 25 percent, and use some of it to give tax breaks to companies that will invest in alternative energy sources. And it wouldn't hurt to give some of the money to companies willing to build hydrogen refilling stations, too, since we need that infrastructure to use hydrogen vehicles.

John McCain's modification of his opinion (Read: A total reversal) about drilling on our coasts is transparent, and it should be realized for what it is - shameless pandering for votes.

McCain's Today debacle

A few days ago, John McCain appeared on NBC's Today, and I don't even know where to start to comment about it. During his 7+ minute appearance, he turned into a virtual gaffe machine.

First, his plastic, creepy smile is enough to give me the chills, but his words made up for my skeeviness, because I was belly laughing in no time.

It's so blatantly obvious that he's doing whatever he can to appeal to the GOP's base, especially the people who remain in la-la land, who believe that cutting taxes is the answer to our significant economic ills.

Enter McCain's proposed "gas tax holiday," which is a complete joke. I just don't know how else to describe it.

When asked by Matt Lauer what he or Barack Obama could do about gas prices, McCain lamely responds, "We could give them [American consumers] a break." Does anyone, and I do mean ANYONE with half a brain, honestly believe that if the federal government stops collecting the gas tax, that prices would go down at all?!? You don't have to be an economist to conclude that Big Oil would simply take up the slack by raising prices by the same amount or more (not to mention OPEC). Another highly undesirable result of suspending the gas tax - the federal government's deficit, which has already reached astronomical heights, would have another huge hole blown in it by another unaffordable tax cut. Not to mention our crumbling infrastructure (which, thus far, neither candidate has addressed in any significant way), which is already underfunded by Congress, would crumble even more. (The gas tax largely funds highway and infrastructure improvements.)

However, my favorite part of the segment above is when Matt Lauer asked McCain what he thought we would be paying for gas by election day. To be fair, it's a "Gotchya Question" (Nice job, Matt, and I don't say that often), but McCain handled it about as bad as he could have...

I'm not sure, because I think part of it depends on how we are making advances in alternate energy.

Lauer came right back at him with, "In that short amount of time?" It was great watching McCain hem and haw after that, saying we could come up with "a battery that could take a car 100 miles or more." Gimme a break. In six months?!? I sure hope I'm wrong and he's right. And those batteries? They've already been invented, senator, but thus far, automakers haven't been putting them in cars in significant numbers. (For those of you who are interested, see the movie Who Killed the Electric Car? for loads of more insight.)

More kudos to Lauer (!) for mentioning the Tax Policy Center, a non-partisan tax group, which has analyzed both candidates' tax plans, and has concluded that 80 percent of McCain's tax proposals would go to those Americans who need it least. Draw your own conclusions there. It is worth noting that McCain was very disingenuous when he talked about "millions of Americans" being affected by raising the Social Security income cap. Yes, that's true, but those affected by raising the cap, according to Obama's proposal, would be well into six figures, NOT lower income Americans. The same goes for capital gains taxes. However, most outrageous of all is how McCain wants to lower the corporate tax rate. Obama should use that as a political cudgel for the rest of this campaign, period.

McCain really was at his "best" when questioned about Iraq...

LAUER: Do you have a better estimate on when the troops can come home in Iraq?

McCAIN: That's not what's important. What is important is the casualties in Iraq.

Really? It's not important when Americans can come home? He's gotta be kidding. I can only hope that any family with a soldier in Iraq heard that comment (and soldiers in the field as well), and I hope they remember it in November. Of course, now that there's an uproar, McCain will undoubtedly reverse himself, but that reversal will be merely out of political necessity and not a reflection of his true feelings. Remember, McCain is the guy who said that we could be in Iraq for the next 100 years. (He later shortened it by saying that troops could be coming home by the end of his first term - how reassuring.)

I also tire of people like McCain citing Korea, Japan and Germany as examples of our troops being permanently being stationed overseas. A substantive political discussion of our military can never be had without a World War II reference. Too bad that those three examples are from the Cold War, something that ended long ago. Comparing the so-called War on Terrorism and the Cold War is like comparing the NFL to Pop Warner football. The two are simply not analogous.

I also found it interesting that McCain mentioned that General Petraeus is going to testify to Congress next month about when we can begin drawing down our troops. I've got a Benjamin that says he'll testify "another six months" or something similar, which is testimony he has repeatedly given Congress since he took over command in Iraq. I've written it before many times, and it bears repeating - it's foolhardy to ask a military general when troops should be withdrawn from the field of battle, because no general is ever going to say, "You know what, committee? What I'm doing in Iraq is a miserable failure. Bring those boys home." It's setting the system up for failure. The last time I checked, our military leaders take orders from civilians elected by the American people in this country, not the other way around. I've little doubt that our command structure in Iraq and elsewhere have the best of intentions at heart and that they do a terrific service to our country, but these repeated Congressional bull sessions where commanders are asked whether they are failing or not are simply ridiculous - it's a broken record every time.

Our corporate media gives a lot of credence to the fact that McCain knows a great deal about foreign policy. I think the man's clueless. And let's not even get started on the economic issues here at home. (Which, by the way, polls say is the most important issue this election season.)

I just don't see how anyone but the most rabid Republican partisan can possibly cast a vote for this guy.

If this guy's right about oil, we're screwed

I cannot even comprehend what our economy would be like if gas were to rise above $6 or $8 per gallon, much less $12 to $15, but that's precisely what energy analyst Robert Hirsch believes is going to happen.

I'm no energy expert, and I'm certainly no economist, but you have to be neither to foresee the consequences of double-digit gas prices on our economy.

I have to confess that I find it extremely annoying that certain politicians and of course the Big Oil executives (who themselves make hundreds of millions of dollars per year in compensation) are preaching that we need to drill and explore more to combat high gas prices. What a crock. However, don't take my word for it - Read Here.

Drilling in ANWR would do little more than line the pockets of Big Oil, and the politicians who approve such a move. I can just about guarantee that there would be no price relief at the pump.

What this country needs is a sound energy policy, and fast. Okay, by fast, I mean when hopefully Barack Obama takes the oath of office next January. Heaven help us if McCain is putting his hand on the Bible at noon on 1/20/09, because that will mean plenty more of the same in the way of energy policy.

We must demand a very radical mass-transit and alternative energy plan from this next administration, which in many ways will be about 170 degrees different from what the Bush administration has spent the last 7+ years giving us.

Alternative energy and mass transit will be a major, major theme of this blog in the coming months and years, including form letters to use to write your elected legislators, news, views, ideas on how to save energy, etc., so stay tuned. This one affects us all, and there will be no hiding from it in the coming years and decades. We've already seen what rising gas prices have done to the prices of just about everything, and it's only going to get worse, unless we demand that our state legislatures and Congress do something about it.

(Major hat tip to Crooks & Liars for the video, as well as the research in finding the MSNBC link on the '04 ANWR study.)