Offshore drilling, eh?

The mythical bridge to Shangri-La has apparently been spotted again, and we’ve got the right (or at least some of them) crowing that if we don’t start drilling off the coastline of Florida then Americans are going to be slammed harder with oil prices.

I’m not sure how this is supposedly a new thing. The right seems to look at oil the way they claim the left looks at money. Whenever there’s a problem with oil prices or American use is just way up, the answer is to throw more oil at it. Nevermind all of the other problems that would inherently come along for the ride.

President Bush popped up and talked about it in his recent radio address, helpfully condensing the idea into a single sentence:

“The fundamental problem behind high gas prices is that the supply of oil has not kept up with the rising demand across the world. One obvious solution is for America to increase our domestic oil production,” he said.

Pam. Well done. Oh wait, there’s more.

“I know Democratic leaders have opposed some of these policies in the past,” he added. “Now that their opposition has helped drive gas prices to record levels, I ask them to reconsider their positions. If congressional leaders leave for the Fourth of July recess without taking action, they will need to explain why $4-a-gallon gasoline is not enough incentive for them to act.”

Now we’ve got it. A classic example of “do what I say or it means you aren’t doing anything”. I did like the addition of blaming the Democrats for the high gas prices, as if all this hasn’t happened mainly in response to Bush’s imperialistic jihad around the Middle East. For example, he might want to check out the deal made with Saudi Arabia prior to the Iraq invasion that went sour. You know the one, where the Saudis promised to up production in order to pick up the slack when the US went in, only to wait until we were stuck there and suddenly jacked the price. That whole thing.

Bush’s idiotic platitudes aside, the “offshore drilling” argument hinges on a few incredibly naive, if not downright stupid, assumptions.

1. Drilling means instant supply. Anyone who thinks that opening up drilling off the FL coast is going to make gas prices go down before your 4th of July probably has no idea what’s going on. It’d be like if we were in a food shortage and the government opened up an extra thousand acres for farming. Just because we can start cultivating the resource doesn’t mean we’re going to actually get it any time soon. We wouldn’t reap the benefits for somewhere around ten years, and the Department of Energy doesn’t even think we’d see peak production for three or four. Even if it were true that this would create a massive added supply (which it won’t), it’s not going to do a damn thing about $4/gal gasoline this year, next year, or after that.
2. Extra oil goes right to the consumer. Here’s another assumption that makes no damn sense. I hate to break it to everyone, but there’s a few middlemen between the oil field and me putting gas into my car. It’s not as though the oil companies are state-controlled and there’s a mathematical formula that decides how much gas costs based on X, Y, and Z factors. Exxon and Chevron are profit-based businesses, and just because we tossed some extra supply into the pool doesn’t necessarily mean we’re going to see gas drop more than a nickel or so.
3. We can do this indefinitely. The core issue that seems forgotten in all of this is that we simply cannot rely on oil forever. America is a petroholic, and Bush is suggesting that we need to pick up another case because we don’t have enough in the fridge. The problem isn’t the supply, the problem is the demand. It needs to go down because fossil fuels are not the wave of the future any more. The sad thing is that even as we top $4 a gallon, no one is suggesting a serious effort to transition away from oil.

So no, I’m not big on the offshore drilling, you could say.

FOX and McCain’s “I didn’t love America” line.

I’ve said time and time again that I won’t pounce on something the other side says if it doesn’t warrant it. That’s why I never really picked up on the attention given to McCain’s line from March about not loving America until he was deprived of her company.

Sure, I understood the point. It echoes Michelle Obama’s now infamous quote and there’s a silence in applying the same “hey let’s take a small quote and blow it up” standard to him as well as her. Plus it looks pretty bad when placed next to Cindy’s McCain’s declaration of being proud of America her whole life.

The line, though, was pretty admirable. We all take the United States for granted, the whole thing of not knowing what ya got ’til it’s gone and all that jazz. I figured that’s how it was seen and that was that. Non-troversy ended.

FOX comes to the rescue yet again, by completely removing the line from their transcript. Go ahead, take a look. The entire exchange is gone. Real Clear Politics has the full deal, but FOX doesn’t.

Now there’s something interesting going on. How could FOX have scrapped that exchange? If it’s not really an issue, if the line really isn’t a big deal… where’d it go?

You have to hand it to FOX sometimes. Not only are they terribly imbalanced, but they’re obviously aware of it. A self-deluded spin room would just have left things the way they are, completely oblivious to why anyone is harping on McCain, defending his comments to the end. It seems FOX realizes the situation and, rather than have to face it, are trying to pretend it doesn’t exist. Kudos, FOX. Kudos.