The random political thoughts thread (Part Deux)

[scaeagles]

I continue to be amused at what is either ignorance or (more likely) preying on the ignorance of the electorate by Obama and Clinton when it comes to oil.

Clinton's attacks on oil prices as artificially inflated, Enron-style, keep escalating, and today she appeared to threaten to break up the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries.

"We’re going to go right at OPEC," she said. "They can no longer be a cartel, a monopoly that get together once every couple of months in some conference room in some plush place in the world, they decide how much oil they’re going to produce and what price they’re going to put it at," she told a crowd at a firehouse in Merrillville, IN.

"That’s not a market. That’s a monopoly," she said, saying she'd use anti-trust law and the World Trade Organization to take on OPEC.

What exactly is that going to accomplish? SQUAT! Our laws and the WTO have absolutely no jurisdiction.

Not to be outdone....

The Obama campaign points out that Clinton has not signed on to cosponsor a bill that aspires "to make oil-producing and exporting cartels illegal."

Again, we can pass a law that makes OPEC illegal? What a dork.

There are two solutions to our oil issue. One, use less. However, it isn't going to happen easily. Our economy runs on oil. The other is to increase domestic production, and sadly (to me anyway) the environmental lobby will wrap any such thing up in court for years. We need a President who will not address the symptoms of the problem, but eliminate it, and none of the three have the guts or will to do it. The only way to weaken OPEC is to take away their market, which we can do.

One argument Bill Clinton made in 95 against drilling in ANWR was that we wouldn't see any oil from it for 10 years. Well, here we are 13 years later and our situation is worse. Politicians suck because it is all about what benefits them in the short term with rarely any vision beyond the next election.

REVOLUCION!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Moonliner]

Originally Posted by scaeagles

I continue to be amused at what is either ignorance or (more likely) preying on the ignorance of the electorate by Obama and Clinton when it comes to oil.



What exactly is that going to accomplish? SQUAT! Our laws and the WTO have absolutely no jurisdiction.

Not to be outdone....


Again, we can pass a law that makes OPEC illegal? What a dork.

There are two solutions to our oil issue. One, use less. However, it isn't going to happen easily. Our economy runs on oil. The other is to increase domestic production, and sadly (to me anyway) the environmental lobby will wrap any such thing up in court for years. We need a President who will not address the symptoms of the problem, but eliminate it, and none of the three have the guts or will to do it. The only way to weaken OPEC is to take away their market, which we can do.

One argument Bill Clinton made in 95 against drilling in ANWR was that we wouldn't see any oil from it for 10 years. Well, here we are 13 years later and our situation is worse. Politicians suck because it is all about what benefits them in the short term with rarely any vision beyond the next election.

REVOLUCION!!!!!!!!!!!!

Every time the price of gas goes up there are a few more Americans that start thinking "Hey, maybe this oil economy is not a good thing. What else is there?". I hope gas goes to $5 a gallon or more. What we need in this country is a good hard slap in the face to get us seriously on the road to energy independence. Solar, nuclear, fusion, hydrogen, wind, geothermal, wave power.... Develop all of them, Use all of them. When the people start to demand it the market will respond.