Just to keep things focused.
I find it interesting that whereas Obama picked a running mate who complemented the shortcomings in his slate–someone with a good deal of experience in foreign relations, for instance–McCain chose someone who will appeal to disenfranchised voting bases from both sides: to women who will see an opportunity to put a female a heartbeat from the presidency (and with a president of McCain’s years, that takes on a serious reality) after Hillary’s campaign ended in flames, and to the conservative base who will embrace a bottom half of the ticket who is apparently somewhere to the right of John Wayne.
The easy answer, of course, is that women won’t support her because she’s anti-abortion. Except there happen to be plenty of women who are likewise anti-abortion–yes, even Democrats–and therefore won’t find that a turnoff.
Frankly, I think Palin was a nervy choice that could reap serious benefits. And the timing of the announcement knocked all the post-convention attention away from Obama and onto McCain, which will now build as they roll into the GOP convention.
Personally, I find the notion of an anti-abortion, pro-drilling, pro-creationism, anti-animal protection vice president to be nothing short of terrifying. Then again, anyone that the extreme right embraces is by definition terrifying.
PAD
• 
The pregnancy of Sarah Pailin’s daughter demonstrate liberal ideas that conservatives fear but should not:
1) The idea that 17 year olds will often have sex depite the preference of parents that they do not.
2) The idea that the ideas 17 year olds have about sex should be more varied than shame and guilt.
3) The idea that 17 year olds should be sufficiently informed to avoid pregnancy if they decide to have sex.
4) The idea that 17 year olds who do become preganant should have and be familiar with options other than getting married to take care of an unexpected offspring.
However, I see no reason to gloat about the situation in the Pailin’s household. And the choice young Miss Pailin is making is certainly a legitimate choice.
Iowa Jim: What is worse is when it is brought up on this site, it wasn’t more strongly denounced.
Speak for yourself. I and several others said there was no proof and we shouldn’t spread the rumor. What did you want us to do, reach through our monitors and put our hands over people’s mouths to shush them?
On another note, you’re right that this instance doesn’t show that abstinence only programs don’t work. However, there are actual scientific studies that do show that they don’t work. So any politician who believes in them is showing bad judgement. Both Palin and McCain are on the record as only being willing to support abstinence only programs, so they’ve both shown bad judgement on the issue.
Finally, blasting oil companies because they want to produce more oil and demanding they invest in “alternative sources” of energy is like asking McDonald’s to stop selling hamburgers, because, you know, turkey sandwiches are healthier for the American people and they should really start selling them. The scary thing is, some people might actually think that’s a good and proper idea.
False analogy, Jerome. Cows reproduce. We’re not gonna run out of cows. Oil, on the other hand, is a FINITE resource. Nobody’s making any more dinosaurs.
To make your comparison work, let’s say that all the cows in the world have been wiped out by a plague, except for a few thousand, that have been rendered sterile. So, after these are gone…no more hamburgers.
And Mickey D’s is still selling their burgers at the same rate (but charging more for them, of course).
So what’s their longterm plan? Well, they say, there might still be 3 or 4 stray cows that wandered off and were not accounted for, so they’re going to institute a massive search operation. If only we can find those extra cows, all our burger problems will be solved.
Y’know, like the idea that domestic drilling will solve our dependence on foreign oil.
Personally, I’m thinking Mickey better start looking seriously at turkeyburgers.
Iowa Jim (aka Pastor Jim) said:
“Being for drilling so that we can actually avoid another war in the Middle East because we have our own source of oil is frightening?”
—
We don’t have enough oil resources available on US soil to make us independent of OPEC. All the oil that they think is in ANWAR is only enough to last 6 months.
Ah, but has she ever shot an old man in the face?
Well, actually, what IS logical is to look at what happens in the real world vis a vis abstinence only sex education vs. contraceptive centric sex education. That’s that science thing that we both agree we should be emphasizing. And the results show that there isn’t a lot of difference between the two with respect to teens having sex, and there might be a small drop in STDs and pregnancy with contraceptive centric sex education.
Now, for me, that indicates contraceptive centric education is the way to go. But YMMV.
pat Nolan said:
“Gov. Palin’s 17 year old daughter is pregnant and is planning to marry the father”
I heard that news a bit ago, too. Not saying it isn’t true at this point, but…
It wouldn’t surprise me if she had a “miscarriage”, oh, say, 2 weeks before the election.
Posted by Alan Coil at September 1, 2008 02:32 PM
pat Nolan said:
“Gov. Palin’s 17 year old daughter is pregnant and is planning to marry the father”
Posted by Alan Coil: I heard that news a bit ago, too. Not saying it isn’t true at this point, but…
It wouldn’t surprise me if she had a “miscarriage”, oh, say, 2 weeks before the election.
Dude, Thats just harsh.
1While it really is no bodys businness bit the Palin family’s she is running for Vice President as a conservative evangelical,so it is interesting for the stero type of an unwed teenage mother to get further destroyed.
But really wouldn’t yopu have loved to have been a fly on the wall when Governor Palin found out?
Or even better when McCain found out? I don’t think she will make it election day.she might not even make it to Friday.
1While it really is no bodys businness but the Palin family’s, she is running for Vice President as a conservative evangelical,so it is interesting for the stero- type of an unwed teenage mother to get further destroyed.
But really wouldn’t yopu have loved to have been a fly on the wall when Governor Palin found out?
Or even better when McCain found out? I don’t think she will make it election day,she might not even make it to Friday.
Iowa Jim said:
“We now learn the daughter is currently pregnant, making the rumor obviously impossible.”
Not impossible. Many families have had children less than one year apart.
Additionally, you are taking the announcement at its face value. It may be true, but it also may be a lie to help cover up the previous lie about the baby’s true mother.
In a normal world, I would believe that Sarah Palin had the baby, and that her daughter is now pregnant with her first grandchild. But this is no longer a normal world. The continual lies and half-truths that are spewed regularly from the Religious Reich and their Republicans lapdogs have made this into an abnormal world.
If we choose to discuss the question of abortion — murder or not, than we should discuss it seriously.
1) Both supporters and opponents of abortion agree that a destroying a fetus past the first trimester is wrong.
2) Supprters of abbortion don’t consider the destroying of a fetus before the 2nd trimester to be murder for two reasons:
a) they do not subscribe to the religious belief that at he moment of conception a fetus has a soul that dies if the fetus is harmed.
b) they do not think that the biology of a fetus at the 1st trimester is such that destroying it is equivalent to the killing of a human entity after birth or at the 2nd and 3rd trimester.
The first debate is religious, the 2nd is biological.
To 1 and 2 are added the social concerns resulting from unwanted pregnancies (which was what Obama said in his speech); and the concern that in a society in which unwanted pregnancies exist (every known human society) some form of abortion will exist, which has lead in the past to physical harm to both babies and mothers as a result of illegal abortion and infanticide.
Pat Nolan said:
“Dude, Thats just harsh.”
—
Yes, it is. I can’t deny that, but I lost any faith I had in Republicans years ago. And I voted for Reagan.
Taking the abortion argument to the extreme…
I heard it suggested that banning ALL abortions would be akin to telling rapists (which includes some fathers) to go out and search for the perfect victim to bear their children.
Abortion must remain legal, but I sure wish there weren’t so many of them.
And maybe abortions should be free for welfare recipients to cut down on the number of future welfare recipients.
Iowa Jim: “What is worse is when it is brought up on this site, it wasn’t more strongly denounced.”
I said it was “unfair” to “cast aspersions” on Palin on the basis of an unfounded rumor. I think that was strong enough. Harsher language, in my experience, does nothing more than lead to flame wars.
I’m curious — did you denounce the 507 groups that lied about John Kerry’s war record in ’04? That wasn’t a rhetorical question — I really am curious.
Iowa Jim: “I find it amazing how conservative views scare those on the ‘left.'”
I find it fascinating that you always cast disagreement in emotional terms. What you interpret as fear is, I believe, passionate disagreement.
Your views don’t scare me, Iowa Jim. I simply believe many of those views are poorly reasoned and would make for bad public policy. But I nevertheless believe you are an intelligent and well-meaning person, and should have the right to express and advocate for your wordlview.
As for Palin, I think I’ve said all I can say in this thread. I believe her views are wrong-headed, she has less worthwhile experience than Obama (she was mayor of a small town, she’s now governor of a small state), and I believe choosing her was a cynical and calculated move by the supposedly straight-talking McCain. But I believe rumors about her child, or suggestions that she should be staying home with that child rather than campaigning, are out-of-bounds.
Alan, the announcement said that the daughter is 5 months pregnant. Palin’s baby is 4 months old. It is indeed impossible for the daughter to be the mother of both children.
Yes, it is conceivable that the facts presented in the announcement are not true. Let’s not go down that road. With no evidence, it’s an unfair and unprovable accusation that doesn’t help the discussion. We’re all better off discussing policies.
Alaska is a broken state. Perhaps we could give it back?
Alaska is the largest state, but has a population around 700,000. I’ve been to at least 4 cities with more people than that.
Alaska ranks just ahead of North Dakota, Vermont, and Wyoming.
Of interest is that the District of Columbia has almost 600,000 people, which ranks it just above Wyoming.
Here in my country we’ve had several government programs to instruct kids and adults into using condoms and birth control pills, and guess what? AIDS cases are in sharp decrease, and teen pregnancies too.
Brazil is one of the leading third world countries in fighting AIDS.
One of the times I was most proud of my country was when an American guy from the Bush administration started to put pressure on us, threatening to cut financial aid if we didn’t change to a abstinency-based program.
Brazilian authorities said, in no uncertain terms, that we don’t mix religion with government policies down here. Oh yeah, that was so sweet.
Alan, your facts are not quite coordinated in re: ANWR. I just now looked up the appropriate data:
According to the USGS (hardly a bastion of liberal propaganda), the amount of “technically recoverable oil” in the ANWR area is estimated to be in the area of 7.668 billion barrels.
According to NationMaster.com, US oil use is around 21 million barrels per day. The best information I can acquire (from multiple sources) suggests that around 47% of this is imported from the Middle East, mostly from Saudi Arabia.
Doing the math, I find that if all the technically-recoverable oil were to be removed from ANWR, it would “free us from Middle Eastern imports” for just over two years, before the whole thing runs dry. Hardly the perfect long-term solution it’s often touted as…
Oh, and Jim, when that rumor surfaced, I ignored it, because it’s too stupid to even bother discussing. If I want to find problems with Palin, I can certainly find better bases for argument than other people’s ignorance of genetics and trisomy-21…
Jerome Maida: A blonde female employee at a Chinese reaturant I went to today came up to me because she saw I was READING about Palin and said how excited she was, how she had backed Hillary because she’s a woman but would now back McCain because he picked Palin.
Rene: A woman or a black man in the highest offices of the country already are potent social messages in themselves. I can see why someone could vote based on that fact only, and I would not criticize them for it.
Luigi Novi: Yeah, my mother said that since McCain picked a woman for his running mate, that she’d vote for him. I think this is a horribly retarded idea. Picking a President based on gender or race is about as idiotic as doing so according to whether he’s had an extramarital affair, whether he wears a bowtie, or how many cavities he had on his last dental checkup.
A shame that leadership qualities doesn’t factor into this itty bitty decision for so many people.
Jerome Maida: 5.) Yes, she wants to drill for oil. Obviously, she feels giving working families more oil to heat their homes so thay don’t freeze and fill their tanks more cheaply so they can do more with their paycheck is more important than the concerns of radical environmentalists.
Luigi Novi: The problems that have been attributed to plans to step up drilling are hardly radical.
Manny: The technology for large scale wind and solar farms has been around for decades. The technology for large scale geothermal energy has been aroung for years. What’s the delay?
Luigi Novi: At the present level of technology, do wind and solar produce as much energy as oil, especially given the amount of energy they put out per their cost and space they require? My understanding is that they do not.
Jerome Maida: She is a reformer and conservative who will reinforce the fact that Obama has spent the last two years stopping a woman from becoming president and now he is going to spend the next two months stopping a woman from becoming Vice-President.
Luigi Novi: If she really tries to “emphasize” this, I think she’ll find that it’ll backfire on her.
Tim Lynch: She’s got better aim.
Luigi Novi: LOL! Oh, Tim, thanks for the best laugh I’ve had today. 🙂
Iowa Jim: I find it amazing how conservative views scare those on the “left.” Opposing the murder of an unborn child is scary?
Luigi Novi: Jim, if you’re going to question a voter’s feelings vis a vis a given politician’s position on a given issue, then you should do according to your understanding (not agreement with, but understanding of) that voter’s view of that position and issue. Obviously, pro-choicers do not see the threat to legalized abortion as the “opposing the murder of an unborn child”, and I’m guessing that you know this. They see it as a threat to a woman’s right to control her own body and reproduction. No one’s asking you to accept this framing of the situation as your own, but to juxtapose a pro-choicer’s stated position with a pro-life definition, and then feign incredulity, is dishonest. It would be akin to me saying, “Wow, Iowa Jim thinks violating a woman’s rights is the correct thing to do!”
Iowa Jim: Any viewpoint can be taken to an extreme and become harmful, whether it is conservative, liberal, libertarian, etc…
roger tang: I wish more people on the right wings believed that.
Luigi Novi: I wish more people on both wings believed that.
Jerome Maida: Blasting oil companies because they want to produce more oil and demanding they invest in “alternative sources” of energy is like asking McDonald’s to stop selling hamburgers, because, you know, turkey sandwiches are healthier for the American people and they should really start selling them.
Luigi Novi: But restaurants, including chains like McDonalds, do respond to such pressure. Do you think McDonald’s introduced the McLean years ago for reasons other than demand for leaner burgers? When they and Burger King starting offering their sandwiches on a plate without a bun during the low-carb craze a few years ago, do you think this was a coincidence? And after the 2004 documentary Super Size Me, McDonald’s experienced their worst profit year, and introduced their “premium salad” line (though they insisted it had nothing to do with the film).
Luigi, I wouldn’t vote on anyone purely on basis of gender or race. Like I’ve said, I’m more interested in Palin’s views on women’s issues than in the fact that she is a woman (and it seems like I disagree with several of her views).
But can we deny that having a woman or a black man in the Presidency is already a message in itself, regardless of the person’s other qualities?
I wasn’t implying that you were advocating that idea, Rene, but in answer to your question, I think “messages” are highly subjective, and I’m not interested in making them the focal point of any election.
Meanwhile, Sarah Palin reveals herself to be another ignorant, stupid neocon, when she claims that the Pledge of Allegiance was written by (or during the time of) the Founding Fathers:
http://eagleforumalaska.blogspot.com/2006/07/2006-gubernatorial-candidate.html/834/246/581480
But really wouldn’t yopu have loved to have been a fly on the wall when Governor Palin found out?
Or even better when McCain found out? I don’t think she will make it election day.she might not even make it to Friday.
McCain knew. It was no secret in Wasilla– read Time’s account at http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,1837862,00.html?xid=rss-topstories
This may come as a shock to anyone who hasn’t gone through this in their family but this sort of thing is not exactly the end of the world calamity people are treating it as. In fact I’d say that most–not all, but most–families probably could tell you similar stories. If liberals think that conservative evangelicals are going to flee from voting the ticket or demand that Palin resign they will be almost certainly disappointed. It might have had some resonance but coming after the false pregnancy rumors it seems mild. In fact, now that I think about it, the kos kids did McCain a big favor. The young lady’s pregnancy was going to come out; now it gets to come out as a rebuttal to ugly rumors.
Hmmm. How long before the same bloggers who were flogging this story claim that it was all a Karl Rove set up?
Yes, it is. I can’t deny that, but I lost any faith I had in Republicans years ago. And I voted for Reagan.
Battle not with monsters lest you become a monster. Dude, you’re better than this.
This is Sarah Palins’s answers to the Gubernatorial Candidate questionaire
http://eagleforumalaska.blogspot.com/2006/07/2006-gubernatorial-candidate.html
Question 2
Will you support the right of parents to opt out their children from curricula, books, classes, or surveys, which parents consider privacy-invading or offensive to their religion or conscience?
SP: Yes. Parents should have the ultimate control over what their children are taught.
I guess that explains her answer to question 11
Are you offended by the phrase “Under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance? Why or why not?
SP: Not on your life. If it was good enough for the founding fathers, its good enough for me and I’ll fight in defense of our Pledge of Allegiance.
I guess governor Palin’s parents made sure she didn’t learn ‘Under God’ wasn’t put into the Pledge of Allegiance until 1954.
The more I read about her the more convinced I am that her being chosen was a knee jerk reaction to
Biden and a shameless attempt to grab Hillary’s supporters.
That’s an interesting questionnaire. I also thought this one was interesting:
Question 10. Do you support the Alaska Supreme Court’s ruling that spousal benefits for state employees should be given to same-sex couples? Why or why not?
SP: No, I believe spousal benefits are reserved for married citizens as defined in our constitution.
So she’s not only against same sex marriage, but she’s also against civil unions that give the same rights as marriage.
I think picking Palin was more than just an effort to grab Hillary supporters. She also seems to be the Right Wing dream candidate. Apparently there are even pictures of her skinning a moose in high school. She could kick Mitt Romney’s ášš.
Well, using murder victims for stem-cell research is fine with your candidate, so yeah.
Then why do we have birth certificates but no conception certificates? Give me the name of one victim of murder by abortion.
“I think picking Palin was more than just an effort to grab Hillary supporters. She also seems to be the Right Wing dream candidate.”
Yes, his trying to kill two birds with one stone. And he would have gotten away with it if it weren’t for those pesky children and their dog.
Well, we don’t know yet if this will work. But it did improve his chances. Conservatives seem to even more willing to overlook Sarah Palin’s flaws than liberal’s too overlook Obama’s
I gotta concede major sympathy points to Palin over troopergate: http://www.lovefraud.com/blog/2008/09/01/it-looks-like-sarah-palin-is-under-troopergate-investigation-because-of-a-sociopath
Lt’s not forget,a s some of Obama’s supporters act like total tools over this, that the man himself has said the right thing:
“I have said before and I will repeat again: People’s families are off limits,” Obama said. “And people’s children are especially off-limits. This shouldn’t be part of our politics. It has no relevance to Gov. Palin’s performance as a governor or her potential performance as a vice president. So I would strongly urge people to back off these kinds of stories. You know my mother had me when she was 18 and how a family deals with issues and teenage children, that shouldn’t be a topic of our politics.”
I’ve said it before–Obama’s biggest liability may be that he has supporters who are so stupid they seem to be bound and determined to act in the worst way possible, even if it hurts their own candidate. It’s a bad day when James Dobson gets to look like a class act in comparison.
No matter what one thinks of gay marriage, the denial of even civil unions is just evil.
Witness the nightmare story of the two guys that had a relationship for 25 years (that is 25!), and then one of them had an aneurysm and now his evangelical parents forbid his partner to visit.
http://atheism.about.com/b/2007/08/16/reasonable-religion-religious-homophobia-causes-real-harm.htm
If some writer had come up with this story, showing the evangelical parents as the evil bášŧárdš they are, most conservatives would say it’s a liberal-biased writer dreaming up stuff to make religious people look bad.
But no, this kind of stuff really happens. And if Palin has her way, it will keep happening.
Now that all the pieces are falling together, I have to admit Palin as a pick is brilliant.
I have no problem with things running by the values republicans claim to represent, if they know to keep government out of our private lives (ha, ha). I voted for Harry Browne in 2000, and NJ was clearly going to Kerry in 2004, so I felt free to skip that election. My problem with republicans has been about them painting a fixed game as fair, which has been the pretense that has sheltered the worst of the Bush administrations excesses.
So Palin keeps her Down syndrome kid, and her family’s vulnerability to a sociopath doesn’t shake her beliefs, all of which frames her reforms as sincere. She seems to be the answer to the right question. “Who’s making advances pìššìņg øff republicans?” Some Alaskan miss congeniality.
I think the McCain camp has been surfing a calm, and we’re about to see how well a storm they can engineer.
A couple of polls have come in from after the Democratic convention. Not crappy overnight polls, but three day polls.
http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2008/09/01/1322961.aspx
Obama is getting a little bump and Sarah Palin isn’t getting a clear reaction so far.
Jonathan (the other one)—
Currently, the US imports somewhere around 70% of its crude oil. We get it from many places.
===========================
Drilling for more oil is not a solution, it is a bandaid. Oil will eventually run out, and in the mean time we are dependent on too many others.
There are millions of acres of oil leases already held by the oil companies, yet they aren’t drilling them.
ANWAR oil would not be of any use to us for at least 5 years, and would likely peak after another decade or so.
We need alternate sources, and we need to start developing them NOW. Giving the oil companies even more leases won’t help a thing.
No matter what the cost would be of developing alternate energies, it would be better economically in the long run.
No kidding. A lot of Dems are itching to nail Palin on her kid’s pregnancy.
As if that’d do any good. A) That just pìššëš øff not only the right wing, but a good portion of the the middle and left and B) IT A SMALL THING IT’S A SMALL THING IT’S A SMALL THING. It’s detracting on any discussion on her ability to pinch hit for McCain, her style of government and whether her reputation for being a corruption fighter is what it’s cracked up to be (she may have corruption in one part of the Republican Party, but it seems that she’s still connected with Sen. Ted Stevens, as it may be she’s still working on his 527 committees and he played a small part in recommending her for the VP slot). More discussion on those BIGGER issues, and not the smaller stuff?
Alan Coil: “Drilling for more oil is not a solution, it is a bandaid.”
This is what bothers me about Palin’s rhetoric regarding thosewho opposed the Alaskan oil pipeline, whom she calls “fear mongers.” She can’t seem to make the connection between investing in an energy technology that we’ve known for decades is a dead end, and the sky-high oil prices today that are killing are economy. That’s the kind of thinking that’s turning us into a second-rate, has-been of a super-power.
We should have been investing in alternative energy sources 30 years ago. Additional oil drilling is a waste of money. It’s not a band-aid, it’s a placebo and not a very good one. First, oil exploration hasn’t been yielding nearly as much as it once did. Second, even if we did find a big gusher like Jed Clampett writ large, we don’t have the refining capacity needed to turn it into anything we can use. And even if we invest in those refineries, so what? We’ll still be dependent in large part on foreign oil, and the commodity will still be vulnerable to speculative trading.
We need to invest in renewable resources — wind, solar, hydro, geothermal — that don’t lend themselves as much to speculative arbitrage. Can you imagine someone saying, “Sorry the price of wind is so high but we’re running out.” I know that’s something of an oversimplification, but seriously, a diverse energy portfolio based on renewable resources would be a lot harder for the dámņëd speculators to manipulate the way they have oil. And because we have our own wind, water, sunlight, and geothermal energy right here at home we’d no longer be at the mercy of foreign oil cartels.
And need we forget the environment? Even if scientific evidence re: greenhouse gases and global warming isn’t enough to sway you, does anyone really believe belching all that carbon into the air could possibly be a good thing? I live in a mid-size city in Upstate New York and even we have smog alerts. Anyone read about all the smog in China? That ain’t cigarette smoke or cows farting, kids. That’s fossil fuel exhaust. Mmmm-hmmm, feel your lungs burning from that fresh exhaust.
But Palin’s got Jed Clampett on the brain. And this has people swooning over her? Sorry, I don’t see it. She’s an empty pantsuit, folks.
The vulnerability is still McCain, not Palin.
If McCain “takes off his mask” when he accepts his nomination, and calls out Bush for the South Carolina primary in 2000, and the last 8 years, then Sarah Palin is the perfect running-mate. She both has made advances in “open the books” reforms, and she’s a sincere-enough social-reactionary to be trusted in representing their interests to keep the base open to the ticket.
Either McCain is going to rise to the promise of his pick, or he won’t be able to hold it all together. Either suits me just fine.
Here’s another reason why we should invest in alternative energy research: It helps other countries, which will help us.
There have been advancements in solar and wind technologies over the years. This has happened despite those fields not getting as much money for research as nuclear or oil. So there is good reason to believe that better funding would produce better windmills and solar collectors.
As the tech gets better, we can sell the tech to other countries. Or they can develop better stuff and sell it to us, that’s good too and it’ll probably be a combination of both. As electric cars are developed around the world, they’ll be able to take off the load from oil.
Which means *everybody* will be buying less oil from the Middle East! Just the fact that we’re buying oil from the Middle East isn’t the only security issue. There are lots of other countries pumping huge amounts of cash in there, too. The Middle East been able to arm so well because of money from around the world, so we have to solve the problem around the world to make any progress.
Drilling in America? That only helps in America. It doesn’t keep China from putting 30,000,000 more gas burning cars on the road over the next decade.
Bill Mulligan: “…some of the nicest people I’ve ever met have been from the net…”
Bill, you and I became friends through the Internet but I have to clarify — I’m not “from” the Internet. You’ve met Jeannie and I — twice — and you’ve seen by now that I cast a shadow.
lucasb wrote:
“False analogy, Jerome. Cows reproduce. We’re not gonna run out of cows. Oil, on the other hand, is a FINITE resource. Nobody’s making any more dinosaurs.”
Since it comes from living matter, I don’t think it’s fair to say it’s finite. Gold is finite. Also dinosaurs aren’t really the whole story.
Bill Myers wrote:
“She can’t seem to make the connection between investing in an energy technology that we’ve known for decades is a dead end, and the sky-high oil prices today that are killing are economy.”
If it’s lasted for decades and will last for decades more, how is it a dead end? It’s gotten us this far. If it weren’t for the wonderful sticky-goodness of oil, our technology wouldn’t be where it is. I’m sure these alternate energy ideas need stuff that oil made to work. Even if was bad for our economy, isn’t it at least as bad for everyone elses? You don’t want to choke off the economy while waiting for these alternatives that are likely outside of our lifetimes. Oil is everywhere, we need it for everything. Noone else is going to hamstring themselves like some of us want to do to ourselves.
A) That just pìššëš øff not only the right wing, but a good portion of the the middle and left and B) IT A SMALL THING IT’S A SMALL THING IT’S A SMALL THING.
Roger’s on target, as is so often true.
The bigger questions here are not about Palin — and inasmuch as these smaller things matter *at all*, they matter in that they’re a reflection of McCain’s judgement, not her character.
Several mainstream news reports have GOP lawyers up in Alaska vetting Gov. Palin now. It’s generally standard practice to do that before offering the VP job, not after. Add to that the report that McCain told aides that his primary interest as a running mate was Lieberman, not to mention the campaign admitting that McCain had only met her once before making the offer, and you get the idea that this was a sudden, last-minute choice on McCain’s part.
Now, in the short term it did its job beautifully: it took everyone so completely by surprise that discussion of Obama’s speech on Thursday got knocked off the radar. In the long term, I think it raises questions: the first thing McCain does under stress is roll the dice on someone he barely knows and apparently hasn’t vetted very much.
That’s seasoned judgement?
TWL
Question for the ones around here who lived through the ’70’s energy crisis and were aware of something besides Star Wars toys–was there a lot of talk about fuel alternative development? Granted, my Star Wars toys are STILL pretty cool.
Somewhere up above, someone was talking about Palin’s daughter being pregnant NOW completely discounts the rumor that the youngest Palin child was in fact the daughter’s. Ever heard of Irish twins? I know people that it happened to. Either way, I don’t care, because of one supremely important thing. Not my family, not my business what goes on.
Now, a person can have really conservative views or liberal views and life still happens to them. A guy I used to work with, as religious and conservative as anyone else, got a girl from another religion pregnant out of wedlock, married her, divorced her, but still lectures people on his conservative views.
…also, Steve Schmidt ran the governator’s reelection, who originally ran an open-the-books campaign in the Davis-recall election. He had to have studied the recall-election up-and-down to handle the reelection. With his pick as Palin, McCain has to be thinking about taking a hatchet to the republican party, which even President Obama wouldn’t have the slack to do. Holy crap, I’d vote for McCain doing a scorched-earth reform of his own party.
How many assumptions are there in here that are problematic?
Devils in the details. Oil could take x barrels to give y kilowatts. If non-oil method A gives y kilowatts and takes .001 x barrels of oil, I’m sure that’s a net win.
Except for the economies that are net oil producers, have more favorable relationships with net oil producers, etc. Economies that are less dependent on oil have a greater relative advantage.
You’re not thinking this through very well, are you?
Posted by Jason M. Bryant:
There have been advancements in solar and wind technologies over the years. This has happened despite those fields not getting as much money for research as nuclear or oil. So there is good reason to believe that better funding would produce better windmills and solar collectors.
If this is so wonderful then why dont they show it?
Certainly if they can show how wonderful solar and wind technology is working the funding would come pouring in. Maybe the big bad oil companies are squashing the success of these alternate means of energy..
By the way.. how will either of those run my car?
You know, I have yet to see anyone say NOT to develope these alternate means. Have you?
Until something comes down the line thats practical ans feesable we are stuck with oil.
What would happen if say tomorrow OPEC decides that the United States no longer gets any of its oil? Because you know that Hugo Chavez is such a honorable upstanding individual. Psycho
We need oil and we need it now!!!!!
Alan, I never said I disagreed with your point – in fact, unless one thinks the world will end in two years, I underlined it. I just thought it would be more fun to use accurate numbers (twenty-six months, not the six months you cited) to counter those who think drilling in ANWR will solve all our problems.
Kevin, it’s true that many of the alternate-fuel technologies need things like plastics (a petroleum derivative) to function. All the more reason why we need to develop them now, while there’s still some oil left to make plastics out of! If we wait until the fuel oil runs out, there won’t be anything left to make the alternatives with…
Oh, Pat, I’m disappointed with you.
If this is so wonderful then why dont they show it?
ROI.
Until something comes down the line thats practical ans feesable we are stuck with oil.
That’s a circular answer. We’re stuck with oil if we don’t decide to get off it.
What would happen if say tomorrow OPEC decides that the United States no longer gets any of its oil?
Same thing as if we didn’t decide to continue drilling in Alaska. Any oil from Alaska or offshore is also a long ways from getting into the gas tank.
We don’t NEED that oil. It’d cheaper to have it, but we don’t NEED it yet.
Come ON. You can think better than that.
“Now, a person can have really conservative views or liberal views and life still happens to them. A guy I used to work with, as religious and conservative as anyone else, got a girl from another religion pregnant out of wedlock, married her, divorced her, but still lectures people on his conservative views.”
How true.
I’ve seen ultraconservative people who’ve had divorces, abortions, extra-marital affairs, bášŧárd children, the works. They always think of themselves as “special cases”, while still maintaning that “other people” shouldn’t have abortions, divorces, affairs, and bášŧárd children.
Truth is, everyone is a special and unique case. Every single person. And trying to come up with these little rules to regulate people’s behaviour in bed is something that should have died out centuries ago.
Sorry Pat, but those comments weren’t even well thought out enough to be worth answering.
Sean, Irish twins isn’t a possibility. Check my earlier post.