Richard, if we cut the ad hominem drivel out of your comments, we get an argument that somehow a Republican President and Congress could not reverse a decision by President Clinton, plus an entirely unsupported argument that “elites” simply object to the prosperity of the “masses”

IMO, the lib elites want the the proles to live considerably restricted lifestyles suited for worker ants. But Joe Lunchbucket isn’t going to give up half his lifestyle for Nancy Pelosi’s esthetic proclivities. We need a crisis and we need laws stemming from the crisis. Solving the crisis isn’t helping.

Feinstein and others said they don’t want to bring down the price of oil because they want to wean Americans off oil.

I will agree that the Republicans have been asleep at the switch on this for the last three years as demand continued to outpace supply and prices escalated.

I used to work as an exploration geologist and know how the business works. The big oil finders are the small, hungry companies. The majors like Chevron, Exxon, Conoco-Philips, etc, are followers.
However, Chevron has recently made a big find, the Jack Field, in the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico. Deep offshore drilling is too expensive for the small wildcatters, so the majors will have to step up to the plate if the OCS is opened.

On a side note: I received a reply to my e-mail from Senator Patty Murray. It was the usual boiler plate about the evil oil companies and oil market speculators. She is convinced we can conserve and develop alternative energies to solve this problem. Like so many on the liberal left, she does not seem to understand the scale of the problem. Or they may not care if the economy shrinks markedly while we search for the energies of the future.

My rebuttal to her is on the way! No fun disagreeing with your elected representatives. But someone’s gotta do it.

And in the four years between 2002 and 2006, when the Republicans had pretty unchallenged control of the United States government, how many oil shale developments did they get ready to go? How many did they actually bring on line?

The latest conservative meme goes like this: American energy problems have simple solutions, and only the crazy lefties Democrats in Congress stand in the way of cheap gas for all. But this meme doesn’t let the Republicans off the hook. They had twelve years in control of congress, four years with both a Republican Congress and a Republican President, and even with warnings coming out the woodwork, they did nothing. I had friends making plans to cope with peak oil in 2000 and before. What excuse can your guys offer?

Either the Congress and President Bush did nothing because they didn’t care enough to plan, in which case, why should the voters trust them again, or else they did nothing because the iol companies and engineers told them that making offshore drilling safe, or oil shale practical, takes a heck of a lot more work than posting blog entries about it.

Either way, I don’t see a very good case here for voting Republican, unless you like a party that can’t plan two years into the future.

sigh… (from a med school…)

It comes down to a woeful lack of knowledge of basic economics.

FredHJr, I think you can strike the last three words from the sentence.

What we really need to do is break this corrupt two-party system and bring some real accountability into our government.

Peter, our system of separation between the legislature and the executive practically forces the two-party system. Coalitions are built within the party to nominate candidates, but only large parties can be players. In a parliamentary system, coalitions are build after elections, so splinter parties can have a serious influence.

Our system is much more resilient in the face of external threat. Look what happened in France as Hitler was preparing to invade: Pro-nazi legislators and agitators exploited the fault lines in the government and left it without a national command authority; this paralysis made it possible for Hitler the freedom of strategic maneuver against an essentially paralyzed military. France’s fall was precipitous and complete.

That doesn’t mean it can’t be exploited. The USSR poured millions into the anti-war movement during the Viet Nam war, and got their money’s worth; a third of our populace is still loyal to the ideas that their front groups promulgated.

This fact ought to inform our discussions about our basic rights and the need for surveillance against enemy agents; people who criticize the FBI’s actions during the sixties should be reminded–loudly and often–of the USSR’s funding of anti-war groups. People on the Right should be outraged, too, at how J. Edgar Hoover’s ineptness went uncorrected so long.

“Many years ago the Colorado School of Mines bookstore had a bumper sticker – “BAN MINING – Let the bastards freeze in the dark””

I WANT that bumper sticker! Change it to oil drilling!

but since we are not near peak oil, and nuclear is better… well, i say open them all up. bakken fields too… there is enough in just those to fuel us for a long time…