Newshoggers.com

No Take-Backs on the Soul-Selling

By BJ

John McCain once had the most powerful brand in American politics.

He was often called the country's most popular politician and widely admired for his independent streak. It wasn't too many years ago that "maverick" was the cliche of choice in describing him.

But that term didn't even make the list this year when voters were asked by the Pew Research Center to sum up McCain in a single word. "Old" got the most mentions, followed by "honest," "experienced," "patriot," "conservative" and a dozen more. The words "independent," "change" or "reformer" weren't among them.

Voters have notoriously short memories, but it could be argued that McCain cheapened his own brand.

No shit. Turns out that the constant shilling for Bush has actually had an effect, something I wasn't entirely certain would happen with the media continuously uttering the "maverick" theme. Still disappointing to see "honest" up there, of course, but I'm willing to bet that will change as people see more stuff like this.

I guess you really can't fool the people all of the time.

Oil Facts

By Ron Beasley

Once again we are hearing rants of outrage about the inability to drill in ANWR.  Yesterday Dyre Reports took a look at what impact drilling in ANWR would have today (and keep in mind if drilling were approved we would not see a drop for 7 to 10 years). 

ANWR is estimated to be able to produce two million barrels of oil a day. Since America uses about 20 million barrels a day thats a pretty impressive amount. The problem is that that the Alaskan pipeline can only transport 2.1 million barrels a day and its already moving an average of 650k barrels a day which means its remaining capacity for carrying oil produced from drilling at ANWR would be 1,450,000 barrels on average. Thats still a good bit. However the additional problem is that since crude oil's price is set by a world wide market that currently consumes roughly 90 million barrels a day. So even if all of ANWR's oil is used only by Americans (say through a clause in the drilling rights lease) then it would only offset an equivalent amount of imported oil (a good thing) however it would only represent a 1.6 percent increase in global supply thereby resulting in an equal price drop. With gas currently at four dollars a gallon that would only equal a 6.4 cent per gallon decrease in prices.

According to the Department of Energy the impact would be even less, less than 75 cents on a barrel of crude.  Of course by the time the first ANWR oil hit the market we will all be driving electric cars anyway.  Assuming the amount of oil is 10 billion barrels and that 2 million barrels can be pumped a day ANWR could supply 1.6 percent of the worlds oil supply for about 13 years.  If you think that ANWR may not be worth it you would not be alone.  The major oil companies have little or no interest in ANWR - it has been used as a political football over the years in an attempt to get what the oil companies really want, to drill on the continental shelf off of California and Florida.

The Wall Street Journal gives it away today:

While energy "independence" is an impossible dream, there's no doubt the U.S. has vast undeveloped fossil-fuel deposits. A tiny corner of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge contains an estimated 10.4 billion barrels of oil and would be the largest producing oil field in the Northern Hemisphere. Yet the Senate blocked that development as recently as last month. The Outer Continental Shelf is estimated to contain some 86 billion barrels of oil, plus 420 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. Yet of the shelf's 1.76 billion acres, 85% is off-limits and 97% is undeveloped.

Did you get that?  eight times more oil in areas that are much easier (cheaper) to develop - that's what the oil companies want but that is being blocked, not by Congress but the States themselves.  That has resulted in an brand new blatant lie for the big oil Republican supporters.

Update

House Republicans vow push on oil drilling

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Congressional Republicans vowed on Thursday to make a major push for more U.S. oil and gas drilling and in the process force Democrats to cast difficult votes at a time of skyrocketing gasoline prices.

With the November congressional and presidential elections looming, Republicans and Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives are blaming each other for rising energy costs and gasoline prices that are topping $4 a gallon.

Republicans cited Democratic opposition to opening up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and more offshore areas to oil and gas exploration and drilling.

House Minority Leader John Boehner of Ohio said Republicans would try to raise public awareness and force more votes on the issue. He said Republicans would back a comprehensive approach of more oil and gas drilling as well as energy conservation and moves toward alternative fuels supported by Democrats.

"Over the next five months, House Republicans will fight every single day to hold Democrats accountable for their dismal record on producing more energy in our country," Boehner told reporters.

Bring it on.  It's going to be difficult when their own presidential candidate doesn't support it.  If they come up with one that includes Florida they write that state off in November.

GOP claim about Chinese oil drilling off Cuba is untrue

WASHINGTON — As Congress has debated energy policy over the past several days, an unusual argument keeps surfacing in support of drilling off the U.S. coastline and in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

Why, ask some Republicans, should the United States be thwarted from drilling in its own territory when just 50 miles off the Florida coastline the Chinese government is drilling for oil under Cuban leases?

Yet no one can prove that the Chinese are drilling anywhere off Cuba's shoreline. The China-Cuba connection is "akin to urban legend," said Sen. Mel Martinez, a Republican from Florida who opposes drilling off the coast of his state but who backs exploration in ANWR.

"China is not drilling in Cuba's Gulf of Mexico waters, period," said Jorge Pinon, an energy fellow with the Center for Hemispheric Policy at the University of Miami and an expert in oil exploration in the Gulf of Mexico. Martinez cited Pinon's research when he took to the Senate floor Wednesday to set the record straight.

Even so, the Chinese-drilling-in-Cuba legend has gained momentum and has been swept up in Republican arguments to open up more U.S. territory to domestic production.

Update:  MojoBlog has more.

The Wall Street Journal article throws in another red herring, oil from shale.  As I pointed out in Oil Shale - a really bad idea for a serious problem the oil shale in the US cannot be developed.

There are of course several problems with oil shale production.

1. It is still a hydrocarbon and will do nothing to reduce our carbon footprint.
2. The environmental impact over several thousand square miles will be devastating.
3. The production requires water - lots of it.

I'm going to concentrate on number three today - that is enough to make it impractical.

The oil shale is located in the Green River formation which is located in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming. Colorado, which has most of the shale, already has a serious water problem which will only get worse over time.

More on this can be found here.

Liquid Lunching With Rummie

By Cernig

Audio segments from the Pentagon's document dump reveal that fun and games were had by all at a Christmastime 2006 luncheon hosted by Donald Rumsfield for the Pentagon's pet military analysts:

As documented by Newsvine, it all went down at a valedictory luncheon Rumsfeld hosted for those analysts on December 12, 2006. Many of the "message force multipliers" named in the original New York Times piece were in attendance, including David L. Grange, Donald W. Sheppard, James Marks, Rick Francona, Wayne Downing, and Robert H. Scales, Jr. They were treated to an extraordinary conversation (Newsvine has highlights, the hour-long clip of which can be found here) with Rumsfeld, that included many jaw-dropping moments, such as Rumsfeld admitting that in Iraq, the U.S. "can't lose militarily, but...can't win by military means alone," an agreement that Iraq could use a Syngman Rhee-type dictator (because that's what democracy smells like!), and a lengthy passage where Rumsfeld jokingly offers a bottle of champagne to anyone who could kill Moqtada al Sadr. You sure don't see too many people joking on al Sadr these days!

But by far the most extraordinary part of this luncheon is the antipathy the gathered members exhibit toward the American people for having the temerity to vote the Democrats back into power. When Lt. Gen. Michael DeLong bemoans the lack of "sympathetic ears" on Capitol Hill, Rumsfeld offers that the American people lack "the maturity to recognize the seriousness of the threats." What's to be done? According to Rumsfeld, "The correction for that, I suppose, is [another] attack."

The horrible lack of honesty and competence displayed by the Worst SecDef Ever when he talks about "winning" only by political means in Iraq or that Sadr isn't a military threat who can only raise protest crowds can be directly tied to the lost lives of US troops. But that almost pales into insignificance compared to the stunning admission of what we DFH's have suspected all this time - that the Bush administration love terrorists and the war on terror for their Republican get-out-the-vote qualities. There's simply no way anyone connected with or supportive of this administration's policies in the War on Terror can be trusted to keep the nation safe if they're actively wishing for disaster to bolster their party's election hopes.

Bush, for instance, yesterday warned that the Democratic presidential candidates' plans to withdraw abruptly from Iraq could "eventually lead to another attack on the United States" and would "embolden" terrorists. How else are we to see that now, after hearing such words from his own first-pick SecDef, but as simple fearmongering for political ends?

Oh, and just for future reference, the shunnable shills who happily sat there and listened to Rummie wish for a new 9/11 because it would boost Republican fortunes among the immature American public were: