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RSS icon Comments on Obama and Cheering Hordes Reponsible for Rising Gas Prices

1

It seems like every McCain ad has the words "Don't Hope" in it.

Posted by JC | July 21, 2008 11:37 AM
2

wow, that's incredible. what a load of horseshit.

Posted by douglas | July 21, 2008 11:39 AM
3

We won't support ball-less NO-Bama and will re-defeat him in November!!!

Posted by clintonsarmy | July 21, 2008 11:47 AM
4

Lots of Bullshit but I have to admit that is one of McCain's more effective ads he has come up with. And it will resonate because most Americans are just stupid enough to think if you start to drill today gas will drop in price in a matter of hours....

Posted by Andrew | July 21, 2008 11:52 AM
5

no end in sight? bulllllllllshit.

Posted by Bellevue Ave | July 21, 2008 12:00 PM
6

Forgive me if I sound like one of those stupid 'Mericans for a moment. I'm not in favor of off-shore drilling, yet I do think there may be something to the argument that drilling would lower prices...even in the short term. If the US authorized off-shore drilling wouldn't that send a message to OPEC countries that we were serious about finding other sources of oil (and hopefully ultimately non-oil sources of energy)? If OPEC thought that US demand was at risk of falling, wouldn't that lower prices? Didn't we see this exact thing happen just last week (price of oil fell ~$10 during the week), and the fall was attributed to "softening demand in the US due to high gas prices."

Posted by Justin | July 21, 2008 12:00 PM
7

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Posted by clintonssarmy | July 21, 2008 12:00 PM
8
If the US authorized off-shore drilling wouldn't that send a message to OPEC countries that we were serious about finding other sources of oil (and hopefully ultimately non-oil sources of energy)?

Seems to me that desperately casting around for the remnants of our oil reserves says the exact opposite of "we're serious about finding non-oil sources of energy"...

Posted by cdc | July 21, 2008 12:06 PM
9

Judging by the look of that gas pump, I'd guess that no one in the McCain camp has had to fill their own tank since the 1970s.

Posted by DOUG. | July 21, 2008 12:14 PM
10

@6,

The problem with that is the assumption that OPEC controls prices.

Didn't we see this exact thing happen just last week (price of oil fell ~$10 during the week), and the fall was attributed to "softening demand in the US due to high gas prices."

And, in the same comment, you illustrate my point. Oil prices are determined by supply and demand, not OPEC. If we had a massive oil supply on a par with anything in the Middle East, drilling could lower prices for the foreseeable future. The relatively piddling amount of oil we can get offshore isn't enough.

Posted by keshmeshi | July 21, 2008 12:18 PM
11

I think members of congress are going to hear from their constituents about increasing our domestic oil production, and no matter who gets elected president, that person is going to have to compromise and approve legislation enabling offshore drilling as well as drilling in the oil shale and such.

I don't think more drilling is going to lower gas prices, though. Seems to me the American consumer is going to get to subsidize the construction costs of the infrastructure that will be required to get to the oil.

Sadly it's not just our cars that need the oil. We use a lot of stuff made of plastic, and plastic comes from petroleum. At some point we're going to end up drilling for more oil just to keep our current lifestyles going. Taking an absolutist position against drilling isn't realistic in the long term.

Posted by kentankerous | July 21, 2008 12:24 PM
12

I just think it's funny America never learned the lessons from the oil embargo of the 1970's. We didn't learn one damn thing and that should tell you how much "change" Americans will do this time around.

Posted by Andrew | July 21, 2008 12:44 PM
13

All the Chinese, South Korean, and Japanese firms are looking forward to McCain giving them cheaper oil.

Because we ain't getting none of it - we can't afford to buy it, so it will be shipped overseas.

Posted by Will in Seattle | July 21, 2008 1:05 PM
14

He's not the messiah, he's a very naughty boy.

Posted by blank12357 | July 21, 2008 1:53 PM
15

Bwah! I posted that before seeing the Life of Brian post below. Spooky.

Posted by blank12357 | July 21, 2008 1:56 PM
16

john mccain = dead polar bears, dead everything except people in suv's

Posted by tyler | July 21, 2008 1:57 PM
17

Kentankerous: you say "we're going to end up drilling for more oil just to keep our current lifestyles going", which suggests you think there's oil there in the first place. There isn't. Oil isn't magically created by the act of drilling for it. The oil companies are doing a pretty good job of snowing the public into thinking that all the oil we could ever want is just sitting there for the taking, but the reality is, off-shore drilling, even if pursued with complete abandon, wouldn't make much difference to our supply, and the vast majority of the "reserves" the oil industry likes to talk about are locked up in things like shales that are totally uneconomic to extract.

There is only one answer here, and it isn't oil. It's alternatives TO oil, and neither McCain nor the the screaming oil addicts are part of that picture. Neither is Obama, to be honest, but he's at least somewhat more realistic and open to new ideas on the subject.

Posted by Fnarf | July 21, 2008 2:03 PM
18

Despite the fact that this is complete bullshit the Obama campaign needs to refute this message, as lots of dumb asses will buy into this. BTW, has anyone seen any of Obama's battleground commercials? I honestly have not, but I really hope he is taking the gloves off and really go after McCain.

Posted by TCO | July 21, 2008 2:12 PM
19

Isn't there some old vs young going on in that ad, too? The old gas pump evokes nostalgia in the oldsters, and then throws the crowd of rabid youngins in their faces saying that their the cause of the high oil prices. 12 years of Republicans blocking raises in CAFE standards would be a better thing to blame...

Posted by NaFun | July 21, 2008 3:23 PM
20

Oh, there's oil.

It would be completely disingenious to state that there's enough oil to continue our current oil consumption indefinitely, but that's not what I meant by "lifestyle". I meant that oil goes into a lot of things that aren't cars, and having those things is what I meant. We need to abandon our dependence on oil as the power source for most of our transportation, there's no question about that. It's just that lots of little modern doo-dads that make our lives better require all kinds of ill-got ingredients such as precious metals and and things made of petroleum. We're not going to stop mining, and we're fools if we think we're going to stop drilling.

Posted by kentankerous | July 21, 2008 4:07 PM
21

Anyone else notice the Bush/McCain approval rating has dropped to 21 percent from 28 percent?

Yeah, it's that bad.

According to the Washington Post today.

Posted by Will in Seattle | July 21, 2008 5:03 PM

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