OIL***** maybe some time

Recharging debate, Obama expands offshore drilling

By BEN FELLERAP posted: 6:18 PM 03/31/10

See full article from DailyFinance: http://srph.it/9TjtAa

WASHINGTON -Shaking up years of energy policy and his own environmental backers, President Barack Obama threw open a huge swath of East Coast waters and other protected areas in Alaska and the Gulf of Mexico to drilling Wednesday, widening the politically explosive hunt for more homegrown oil and gas.

Obama's move allows drilling from Delaware to central Florida, plus the northern waters of Alaska, and exploration could begin 50 miles off the coast of Virginia by 2012. He also wants Congress to lift a drilling ban in the oil-rich eastern Gulf of Mexico, 125 miles from Florida beaches.

Still off limits: the entire Pacific seaboard. And in a nod to conservation, Obama canceled oil exploration in Alaska's Bristol Bay, deeming the area a national treasure.

Republican George W. Bush pushed for years to expand offshore drilling. He and Congress lifted bans on some drilling in 2008, when gasoline prices hit record levels. But Obama's plan is narrower than Bush's, which also would have opened up oil and gas leasing areas off California and in the North Atlantic.

Obama got a predictable pummeling Wednesday from environmentalists, who sarcastically compared him to Sarah Palin, the former vice presidential candidate whose oil-promoting speech at the Republican National 

Convention in 2008 famously drew chants of "Drill, Baby, Drill!"

But it is clear the president wants to show the opposition party that he is willing to come toward them with hopes the GOP will do the same in return. He has already done so on nuclear energy. However, winning a broad climate and energy bill remains an enormous lift for Obama in this election year.

See full article from DailyFinance: http://srph.it/9TjtAa

Daily Finance

Pence Calls President’s Drilling Announcement “Smokescreen”

Washington, DC—U.S. Congressman Mike Pence, Chairman of the House Republican Conference and the American Energy Solutions Group, issued the following statement today regarding President Obama’s announcement on oil and gas exploration:

“As usual the devil is in the details.  Only in Washington, D.C., can you ban more areas to oil and gas exploration than you open up, delay the date of your new leases and claim you’re going to increase production.

“The President’s announcement today is a smokescreen.  It will almost certainly delay any new offshore exploration until at least 2012 and include only a fraction of the offshore resources that the previous Administration included in its plan.

“Unfortunately, this is yet another feeble attempt to gain votes for the President’s national energy tax bill that is languishing in the Senate.  At the end of the day this Administration’s energy plan is simple: increase the cost of energy on every family in America and trade American jobs overseas at a time when millions of Americans are looking for work.”

Boehner: Obama Administration’s Decision Keeps Vast Majority of America’s Offshore Energy Resources Off Limits GOP Leader: “Keeping the Pacific Coast and Alaska, as well as the most promising resources off the Gulf of Mexico, under lock and key makes no sense at a time when gasoline prices are rising and Americans are asking ‘Where are the jobs?’”

Kliphnote: Just about what I said.  Don't hold your breath waiting.

"Might the real reason for Obama's change of heart be related to the uproar the White House is anticipating when in a few days the EPA announces a controversial ruling that will declare CO2 as a toxic and which will finalize the emission standards of light trucks, etc.   What a devious way to divert the publics attention from what is to come by announcing a policy that the general public is generally in favor of!"

 

Senator: ‘Cap and Trade’ not an issue in 2010

WHEELING - U.S. Sen. Jay Rockefeller said Tuesday that he does not believe a climate change bill will see the light of day in 2010.

Rockefeller, D-W.Va., in town to discuss recently passed congressional bills with numerous local groups, said the legislative calendar is already filled with other issues that take priority over climate change.

"We just finished health care, and it isn't even entirely finished yet," he said. "We are going into jobs, we are going to regulate Wall Street because they have misbehaved very badly, and we are going to focus on education."

"I will tell you that there are not 10 percent of people in Congress, either house, that can give you three paragraphs that make any sense on what cap and trade is," he said. 

News-Register

Op-Ed Columnist

The Rage Is Not About Health Care

By FRANK RICH

Published: March 27, 2010 

THERE were times when last Sunday’s great G.O.P. health care implosion threatened to bring the thrill back to reality television. On ABC’s “This Week,” a frothing and filibustering Karl Rove all but lost it in a debate with the Obama strategist David Plouffe. A few hours later, the perennially copper-faced Republican leader John Boehner revved up his “Hell no, you can’t!” incantation in the House chamber — instant fodder for a new viral video remixing his rap with will.i.am’s “Yes, we can!” classic from the campaign. 

There’s nothing entertaining about watching goons hurl venomous slurs at congressmen like the civil rights hero John Lewis and the openly gay Barney Frank. And as the week dragged on, and reports of death threats and vandalism stretched from Arizona to Kansas to upstate New York, the F.B.I. and the local police had to get into the act to protect members of Congress and their families.How curious that a mob fond of likening President Obama to Hitler knows so little about history that it doesn’t recognize its own small-scale mimicry of Kristallnacht. 
[no link and no hits for the moron--look it up yourself]

Kliphnote: It has nothing to do with race or anything else. 

How soon Frank Rich forgets what was said about Bush.

Rich, take your blinders off. 

How many times has a Conservative been shouted down by your kind.

Just make up anything you want? Early April Fool joke?

I would not have voted for Ralph Nader, and he's white and not gay.

Pardon the Interruption

MSNBC’s Chris Matthews, who is best known for his inability to let his guests finish a sentence, criticized Fox News anchor Bret Baier for interrupting President Obama during Baier’s White House interview on Wednesday.

Is it true, as Matthews and his guests suggested, that Obama did not have time to make his case? A review of the tape—down to the second—shows that Baier’s total talk time was 5 minutes, Obama’s was 18 minutes​—much of it spent filibustering to avoid answering Baier’s questions. By comparison, in the Hardball segment in which Matthews criticized Baier, Matthews spoke for 2:51 and his two guests for a total of 2:55.
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