Time for a Field Trip

Now that Gov. Palin's the pick, how about a field trip to ANWR?

The Gov. could be the official docent. Even more impressive would be to have union member husband Todd be the guide since he has actually worked on the north slope.

McC can then learn for himself that drilling up there can be done and can be done right.

The important thing is to make a huge production of it. Take the press. Invite Brokaw, Williams, & Couric. "You went with Barry to Berlin, you should come with me. Let me give you the home town tour of ANWR from one who knows it." Invite O'Reilly, Rush, Matthews, and that guy on CNN. Invite Oprah and the girls from The View. Fill up that huge Straight Talk Express plane with a bunch of pressies and crank up the "North To Alaska".

To make it really good, invite Barry to come along. Invite him to do so from the stage at the GOP national convention. A bipartisan, patriotic, post-partisan thing to do.

The important thing is to take advantage of this issue.

No, the important thing is to start drilling up there.

Go, Rahm, Go

I'm probably as Republican as they git. And I'm certainly no Rahm Emanuel fan because he did such a politically admirable, tho otherwise unpardonable job defending the indefensible--Billary in the Monica Lewinsky affair.

Have to tip my hat, tho, that he's come up with a great bill that would encourage the development of natural gas automobiles. Read the press release here. Found a reference to it on T. Boone Pickens' Pickens Plan site.

Tho I'm not convinced, as T. Boone is, that wind is the solution to our energy probs, the thought of natural gas cars replacing gasoline cars fascinates me. Battery cars have to be plugged in and to do any kind of major conversion will take more nuclear power plants. That will take years. Also, I'm not sure how clean all these batteries will end up being in the long run.

Rahm's bill would require car companies to build NG cars (the technology's already there), encourage gas stations to start providing NG, and give tax incentives to regular folks who buy the NG cars or convert their gasoline cars to NG. Talking heads on CNBC argued the other morn whether that conversion would cost $2,000 or $3,000, so conversion would assumably be in that neighborhood.

The thing that sounded coolest in Rahm's press release was the "Phill". Should his bill pass, we would get tax credits for installing Phill connections so that cars could fill up at home by connecting to home NG lines. Think of it: every night we could fill up our cars right in our own garages. We'd never have to stop at a "gas" station again. How convenient is that!

So Rahm . . . I can't see me ever voting for you, but I certainly support you on this one. Hopefully, knuckle heads on both sides of the aisle and in both houses of Congress will pull together and push this thing through.

We're Paying for Both Sides of the War

T. Boone Pickens was on CNBC this morn launching his new energy plan. I love this guy. He's spending ten million dollars of his own fortune to publicize the plan and it's certainly worth a look.

T. Boone argues that we should build enough wind to replace the natural gas now being used to generate electricity and then convert cars from gasoline to NG. The goal is American energy independence. The technology already exists for NG vehicles--many buses here in the DC area run on NG. And NG is plentiful here in the US as long as the politicians and tree huggers will let us go get it.

More on all this later, but suffice it to say here that he's dead on when he points out the danger of sending $700 billion overseas every year to pay for oil, much of it to less than friendly folks in crazy parts of the world.

We send troops to fight and to die with the hope of stabilizing and democratizing the Middle East. At the same time we send petro dollars to Iran and Saudi Arabia who use those dollars to support the jackasses who are killing our troops.

It's got to stop.

Turn Out the Lights. . .

the party's over. You know that all good things must end. Call it a night, the party's over. . . .

Fla Tourism v. America

This idiot was on CNBC the other morning looking like a fool. Maybe idiot is too strong a word. At the very least, she's a short sighted, pandering politician. She couldn't have looked more uncomfortable knowing that she held an untenable and increasingly unpopular position. But if you're a Florida Dem I guess you have to kiss up to the lefties to keep those re-election bucks flowing.

Her argument was that drilling off the Florida coast would hurt tourism. To quote her, the Florida tourist industry "is much more important than the problem we're talking about here" which was the high price of oil. The Fla tourism industry more important than the price of oil for the rest of the country? You've got to be kidding.

What's going to hurt Florida tourism is no one being able to afford the gas to drive to Disney. And no one being able to afford the airfare to fly to South Beach. And the airlines canceling all the flights to all the piss ant airports in the Sunshine State bc. they can't make a profit.

Commie in Congress

Communist Maxine Waters, Democrat from L.A., she of the the-Rodney-King-riots-were-"a rebellion"-not-riots fame, wants to nationalize Big Oil if it won't guarantee a decrease in oil prices in exchange for the right to drill.

That's great, just great. Government will do as well with oil as it has with Katrina, the DMV, and the Veterans' Administration. This says it all.

Tell Us How Your Really Feel

Dow Chemical announced today that it will be increasing the price of all of its products due to increased energy costs.

CEO Andrew Liveris knows how to tell it like it is. Typical Aussie. In an interview last week he called Congress "a joke" for prohibiting offshore drilling. "To me that is the insane asylum being run by lunatics."

I'm trying to find the full text of his statement today, but in the meantime, here's a blurb from Yahoo:

"For years, Washington has failed to address the issue of rising energy costs and, as a result, the country now faces a true energy crisis, one that is causing serious harm to America's manufacturing sector and all consumers of energy," Chairman and Chief Executive Andrew Liveris said in a statement.

"The government's failure to develop a comprehensive energy policy is causing U.S. industry to lose ground when it comes to global competitiveness, and our own domestic markets are now starting to see demand destruction throughout the U.S."

Sounds like he's going to be sending production overseas.

Sounds like he's predicting recession.

More Energy Policy Asininty

Talk about the chickens coming home to roost.

Jim McTague hits it right on the head when he chides our three presidential candidates for failing to stand up to electoral vote powerhouses Florida and California who have blocked exploration for off shore oil and natural gas.

We're way behind the curve here and now we're to be punished. And for what? So environmentalists can feel safe. So the ocean view from the Malibu hills is not sullied with ugly oil rigs. So some politicians can raise enviro-dollars and others can avoid ruffling feathers.

In the meantime, Granny Sixpack can't afford to fill the fuel oil tank and Joe Trucker is reduced to driving around the Mall in Washington honking his horn, looking like a dingbat. How short sighted.

I guess we'll see now how Florida's tourist industry can handle $200 a barrel oil. My guess is that many fewer folks will be driving down to see Mickey and South Beach.

Trust Babies

Descendants of the John D. Rockefeller on Wednesday made a big hullabaloo, chastising Exxon Mobile for going after short term profits from high oil prices and advising XOM to start investing in alternative energy.

How nice to be a limousine liberal trust baby.

The problem, little dears, is that XOM, FYI, is an oil company. Their responsibility is to their shareholders--you and me and everyone else in this country who has a pension plan, has an interest in a college or church endowment, or is invested in a large cap mutual fund. What they're good at--damn good at, in fact--is finding, pumping, and delivering oil.

They're not good at spending money on speculative technologies that aren't proven to be profitable without government subsidies. Nor are they obliged to. Let the venture capitalists and the college professors and the government grant hogs work on that stuff.

If you don't want to make money off of Big Oil, Rockefellers, sell your Exxon shares. Buy some First Solar (FSLR) or Canadian Solar (CSIQ)--both have appreciated at a much better rate than XOM in the past year.

And stop whinin'.

On Ethanol On Earth Day

This by Bogdan Kipling is the best that I've read about the disaster that is our ethanol/energy policy. As Kipling points out, we are taking corn out of the mouths of the hungry in order to fill our gas tanks. It's just not right. And, maybe worse, it makes no sense.

Why do we do this? To appeal to the voters in our first presidential primary for one. Also, the powers that be are frightened by the tyrannical eco-lobby which has no balance. If you're in Congress and stand against ethanol, you stand, therefore, against The Earth. The only things worse than that are smoking and not wearing your seat belt.

The bottom line to me is that this is, as Kipling so finely points out, an economic policy so terrible that it's unethical. Taking corn off the self to put in our gas tanks is driving basic food prices through the roof. And for what? So some of us can feel good and others of us can win in Iowa. The ripple effects are beyond the imagination.

It's time to stop. Take the ethanol subsidies and use them to build nuclear power plants. Or use them to develop clean coal technologies and alternatives to the combustion engine. Use them to dig tar sands. Put that money into something that doesn't drive up the price of tortillas for every poor Joe in Costa Rica who's having economic trouble enough as it is.

If our friends inside the Beltway can't figure this one out and can't do anything about it, we should all be worried about our Future.