$3 gas: time to cut ties with OPEC?

[TheFarseer]

I caught the tail end of this segment on Fox News flipping through channels. My subject line was on the bottom of the screen and the panel seemed to be saying we need to forget all this 'environmental stuff' and get to work on being self sufficient with oil. A nice Earth Day message!

These people live in a dream world and they're terribly misinforming their viewers. The idea that we can tell OPEC to 'kiss my ass' and drill our way to heaven in the Gulf and ANWR is completely absurd, but they debate it like we wouldn't need any oil from anywhere else if we just say screw you caribou. Cut ties with OPEC?!?!?! Are you crazy!?

[depakid]

1. You can't teach these people

They not only don't understand, but they refuse to accept science or economics. All they'll do is come back at you with absurd counterfactuals and cite mathematical impossibilities. You simply can't reason with most Republicans. Delusional is about the only word that seems to apply.

[Missy M]

2. Yesterday while listening to CNN they had a segment about...

the gas prices and how they keep rising. They then interviewed people at the gas pumps and one man replied that we have to start drilling in Alaska so we can become less dependent on the Middle East. Are the rising gas prices being done to set the American people up to drill in ANWR?

[TheFarseer]

4. you have to wonder

I'm less conspiritorial than that. I just think it's about making as much money as they can.

As for the panelists, I guess the president getting his way is so important that they will say anything to get him what he wants.

[Missy M]

6. Normally I am not a conspiritalist but the comment by that man...

got me to thinking they may be up to more than just making as much money as they can. I guess we will just have to sit back and wait and see.

[leesa]

3. It's because, like always, they want you to believe it's the 'dirty Arabs'

who are doing this to us and not the fat, rich white men of Chevron, Exxon, BP, etc. Same old, same old...

[bahrbearian]

7. It's both

[niallmac]

5. Do our oil companies make a bigger profit margin

when we rape our own land e.g. ANWAR instead dealing with the Middle East? Seems like an obvious quesion now that I
see it in front of me.

[LSK]

8. the right is trying to blame gas prices on environmentalists

Which is FUCKING BULLSHIT. We've had a GOP President since 2000 and a GOP Congress since 2002. Theres no fucking way environmental issues have run up gas prices NOW!

Why they fuck wasnt gas at $3 when Clinton/Gore were in office???

FUCKING RIGHT WINGERS HAVE THE LAMEST MOST ILLOGICAL ARGUMENTS.

:grr: :nuke: :grr:

[sharp_stick]

9. We don't have enough

I think we could pump every ounce of oil on US soil and we'd run out almost immediately without foreign support. These people are beyond idiotic.

One thing I'd really like to see is a big push to using ethanol. We have farmers being paid not to grow crops right now, put them to work growing corn and barley. We'd need one hell of an infrastructure build to make it cost effective but it would be a lot more environmentally friendly and we would need a lot less oil.

[TheFarseer]

12. Not true, farmers are planting every acre they have

Freedom to Farm Act in 1996 did away with the set-aside program and made it wise for farmers to plant every available acre of land. Set-aside was rendered irrelevant as a price support by global competition so in a way the legislation made sense although it is still a drag on prices. I basically agree with everything else you said. We need to improve ethanol production and infrastructure to make it an effective alternative if we are going to go the bio-fuels route. But for Christ sake let's go SOME route before it's too late.

[sharp_stick]

15. Thanks for the clarification n/t

[kenny blankenship]

10. Idiots. Even if you forgot "all this environmental stuff" it cannot happen

A) America has discovered and indeed, pumped most of its oil already. This is not a function of environmental stuff, but simply a function of the U.S.A. being an early discoverer of crude oil and the biggest user. What remains is very expensive to get out of the ground.

B) America doesn't have a NATIONAL PETROLEUM COMPANY. If oil were a nationalized commodity, the Government could set a very nominal return on its investment in drilling and refinery operations and Americans would pay a softer price for gas and oil products. Instead we have a 100% privatized petroleum industry (except that the American public provides the oil companies international muscle in the form of our armed forces) and Americans pay formerly American companies (now global multinational companies) the world price of oil, plus local refining costs for their gasoline. If the oil in Alaska was nationalized maybe it might lower your fillup costs for a while, but otherwise the ONLY WAY IT CAN AFFECT YOUR GASOLINE BUDGET IS IF THERE WERE SO MUCH OF IT WAITING TO BE PUMPED, IT WOULD LOWER THE WORLD PRICE OF OIL--AND THAT'S SIMPLY NOT THE CASE.

America will NEVER be self-sufficient for petroleum again. EVER. Nor will it be self-sufficient for natural gas ever again. FOX news people aren't idiots nor illiterates. They have access to published data and access to informed opinion. The only explanation for their broadcasting of this line is that they think Americans ARE IDIOTS AND ILLITERATES. You'd have to be either totally retarded, or just unwilling or unable to read anything on the subject, to believe that scuppering environmental priorities--or indeed, ANYTHING ELSE--could in the least way make the United States self-sufficient again with regard to petroleum.

What they are promoting is LITERALLY a PRE-1973 mindset, as if Nixon were still in office. After that year it has been plainly obvious that there is a global oil market and unless you have your own supply and unless you have a state-run oil company selling locally drilled adn refined gas to citizens at tiny margins over cost, you pay the world price for oil and local refining costs with large increments of profit (plus taxes) added in. Since the FOX Noose-ers aren't sub-normal IQ, and they can all read like grownups can, the only conclusion left to us is that they are deliberately lying to America, and fostering a Nazi-like belief in a fictional past when our country was perfect and strong and didn't have to make terms with the world around us.

[TheFarseer]

13. Now the only question is

are they schilling for bush or big oil? Schilling for bush is nothing new but schilling for the oil industry would be new and truly frightening.

Also, do you think accusing republicans of having a pre-1973 mindset can be harnessed like they have harnessed 'pre-9/11 thinking'?

[kenny blankenship]

14. It's just a general ideological goal shared by bigcorps and GOP:

destroy environmentalism. Discredit environmentalists. Dismantle environmental policies altogether. Use ANYTHING. Blame any negative situation on Democrats, Democratic policies, Democratic constituencies... They know full well that petro self-sufficiency is impossible, but they also know people are increasingly angry about prices and they want to use that anger to accomplish their longterm goal of annihilating the pro- environmental consensus (to the extent it still exists).

I don't know if accusing Rapepublicans of having "Pre-1973" mentality is exploitable, but unless Democrats counter this bullshit with some plain talk, a clear explanation of the situation confronting us, then the public may be suckered by the nonsensical idea that their pain at the pump is due to environmental policies since that's all they will hear. The corporate ideologists and their GOP pawns have consistently tried to displace blame for rising oil prices from the war in the middle east and the topping out of global production onto environmental policy--to displace a largely Republican problem (stupid-ass war) onto a Democratic policy priority. The Who-stabbed-us-in-the-back-this-time? game that the Republicans love playing has started, the only question is whether the Democrats will get up and go on the attack, or continue to play a failing defense.

[madmom]

11. If we would have listened to Jimmy Carter in the 70's we wouldn't

be in the situation we're in right now.