Drop in Oil Prices a Bad Thing?

Oil nears $100 a barrel ahead of Opec meeting
from TimesOnline, via Instapundit

Glenn Reynolds comments, "I suspect we'll see production cuts. I'm not sure it's a good thing if oil drops much below $100/barrel anyway, as it will kill off alt-energy and conservation efforts that we're very likely to need anyway."

I don't know that I agree with Glenn's assessment. At this point, it seems as if our flirtation with $4 gas has scared consumers enough to create a semi-permanent lifestyle change, at least among the more common folk. It obviously hasn't stopped Hollywood and environmental advocates and touring pop acts from hopping on private jets, but amongst regular people, I think we have realized that dropping a ton of money on a gas-guzzling SUV isn't the wisest choice, whether gas is $4 or $2. The automobile industry has swerved away from the late-90s, early-00s (read as "aughts") mode of thinking, and has already invested so much money in developing alternative modes of transportation that it would be counter-productive to pull the plug now. There has proven to be a market for high-mileage vehicles, be they hybrids, or electric, or simply standard-fueled cars that get better gas mileage, and I don't think that will change. Like recycling, fuel conservation has quickly become pretty firmly entrenched in our national psyche - it's something that doesn't hurt to do and it saves a few extra dollars, something that most people would be happy to do in this era.

Ted Nugent on Energy Policy

Nice work in Human Events from Nugent, on the Gang of 10 and the ongoing and ultimately disastrous (for the GOP) love affair with "bipartisanship."

Gang of Sellouts hat tip to my Mom, who emails me Human Events every Friday morning :)

The Gang of Ten is a bipartisan group of senators who recently offered an energy policy -- intentionally or stupidly otherwise -- that can only benefit Senator Obama, whose energy policy up until this point was to tell us to keep our tires just as liberals prefer Fedzilla: properly inflated.

Additionally, the Gang of Ten would provide over $80 billion in tax credits for alternative fuels by eliminating $30 billion in tax breaks for oil companies, which of course ultimately comes out of American consumer's pockets. That’s right: raise taxes on the very companies that would invest in finding more real energy to help make America energy independent, while propping up more Fedzilla hoaxes like ethanol. The Emperor not only has no clothes, he's fat, wart-riddled and ugly.

WaPo Editorial on Drilling

'Snake Oil'
Debunking three 'truths' about offshore drilling

Surprisingly centrist editorial that takes on some of the misleading, or outright false claims that the anti-drilling environmentalists often make. While I give the editors at the WaPo credit for doing that (although not too much, when you reach the point where even Obama and Nancy Pelosi are trying to achieve some "nuance" in their positions on drilling, I guess it's not too surprising to see the media following suit), in the course of "debunking three 'truths' about offshore drilling," the editors contribute a few of their own, namely:

Contrary to the baldly political suggestions regarding lower gasoline prices by President Bush and Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), drilling would make no impact on today's pain at the pump because it would be years before any oil flowed from the Outer Continental Shelf.

Seriously? Have these people been paying zero attention to oil prices recently, or do they simply have no understanding of how market speculation works? President Bush had but to casually mention that he was perhaps pondering the idea of rethinking the ban on drilling, and oil prices have been dropping ever since! And even if, for some strange reason, the greedy, evil oil speculators for some reason decide to go against every law of economics and continue buying oil in the face of the potential for a vastly increasing supply down the road, why is this an argument against drilling? This is the same argument that liberals and enviromentalists have been making for decades now, that drilling won't produce results for years. At what point is someone (besides Jay Leno) going to stand up and state the obvious, that if drilling truly won't produce results for years, maybe we should get started now!?

We agree that the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, with its varied and sensitive ecosystems, should be preserved. In the quest for new sources of energy, there
are trade-offs. That pristine area must remain off-limits.

This endlessly repeated meme needs to die, and quick. This is another case where the editors either have absolutely zero grasp of the facts involved, or else they simply don't care about the facts and are going to just continue parroting the party line entire the Post goes the way of so many other venerable newspapers. ANWR is not some pristine land of glistening lakes, surrounded by endless herds of caribou and other wildlife, bordered by snowcapped mountains and verdent forests. There are certainly some strikingly beautiful parts, but particularly in the relatively tiny percentage that would be drilled on, it's a veritable wasteland, indistinguishable from acres and acres of tundra elsewhere. To mortgage our countries future by allowing us to be held hostage by our enemies for the sake of a few acres of wilderness is asinine.

Keep the Pressure On - Part the Third

In the Corner, Rich Brookhiser writes with regards to the the House Republican's recent tactics:

Isn't this the equivalent of a sit-in, except that the sitters are representatives? If a Democratic rump had defied Gingrich or Hastert in such a fashion, wouldn't we tut-tut about their behavior?

He's got a point, if these were Democrats remaining behind on the floor of the House, causing a scene, Republicans (myself included) would probably snidely comment that it was nothing but a publicity stunt, that they were behaving like schoolchildren, that it was just another in a long line of meaningless protests.

Having said that, I feel like this is a legitimate tactic on the part of the GOP solely because it is being done by the GOP. The Left has used this type of tactic ad nauseum in the past, basically from Vietnam on, with students and various organization staging protests seemingly every week for the past eight years, filled with giant paper mache puppets and poorly spelled signs and leftover hippies. The Right almost never employs these tactics, as a result, they seem fresh, and daring, and rebellious. They're attracting so much attention on the Right, generating so much excitement precisely because they feel new to us, they're a change from the status quo. We're trying something different, something new, and it feels good.

McCain Running On All Cylinders

McCain visiting motorcycle rally, nuke power plant
via headline on Drudge

As his opponent continues to struggle, reversing himself on issue after issue, John McCain seems to be hitting his stride, riding the momentum of a strong week and a tie in the polls. He's visiting nuclear power plants, attending motorcycle rallies, calling out Congress for taking vacations, and hanging with Def Leppard and Lynyrd Skynyrd. He also had a couple great lines reported in the above article, including:

"As you may know, not long ago a couple hundred thousand Berliners made a lot of noise for my opponent. I'll take the roar of 50,000 Harleys any day."

and

"My opponent wants to set a date to come home. I want us to come home with victory and honor so we will never go back again."

Good, solid stuff. Obama seems to be reeling a bit, his press cover is faltering, and McCain now has a number of issues on which he can continue to hammer the golden boy. Keep it up.

New poll shows Obama losing support among young, women

Good news for McCain, for what it's worth - polls are always suspect, but if this is true, it means that McCain is cutting into what has been one of Obama's strongholds, younger voters. I have nothing to base this on beyond my personal feelings as a young voter (and at 28, do I even count as one of those still?), but I'd like to think that this is at least partially a reaction to the events of the past couple weeks, the scene in the House with the GOP staying behind, McCain's recent Moses ad, the increased general feistiness of the McCain campaign.

Speaking for myself, again, hopefully as a "younger" voter, I'm tired of seeing things run in Washington the way they have been my whole life. I'm tired of corruption and the status quo, and right now, despite all of Obama's talk of change, McCain is the candidate who is actually shaking things up. Right now, Obama is following McCain's lead on energy and on Iraq, trying desperately to somehow get to his right, angering his base in the process. Meanwhile, McCain and the GOP members in the House are able to sit back and gently mock Obama and Nancy Pelosi, inject some fun, some excitement into politics. Most importantly, McCain and the GOP are conveying the sense that things are actually getting done. This isn't politics as usual, this is members of the House of Representatives setting up webcams, using Twitter in the absence of CSPAN. Who knew energy policy could be exciting? Certainly not young voters, but they're starting to find out.

Keep the Pressure On - Part 2

White House says no to special session of Congress
via TheHill.com

Headline notwithstanding, more encouraging news from Capitol Hill, where Republican members of Congress continue to demonstrate (some may say "grandstand," but I'm not one of them) in order to draw attention to the Democrat's refusal to debate or vote on energy policy and domestic drilling.

If nothing else, I admire the verve and sense of humor that many of the members seem to be bringing to the proceedings. Too often, the GOP seems to be content to allow themselves to be painted as the party without the ability to laugh, unwilling to make fun of themselves, the group of old boring white men, too far removed from society and reality to bring about any sort of meaningful change, and impossible for young people to identify with.

Meanwhile, as any conservative who has tried to debate or talk to a liberal, it is far too often the liberals who are lacking any sort of a sense of humor, who take themselves way too seriously. This is a weakness that the GOP, already portrayed as underdogs, should be exploiting all the until November. No one is more deserving of this treatment than the man at the top of the ticket, and this ongoing effort in the House coincides nicely with the post below...

Keep the Pressure On

Bush rips Democrats for opposing offshore drilling
Via MyWay by way of Drudge

Relatively straightforward article about Bush calling on Democrats to debate and allow a vote on lifting the ban on drilling for domestic energy, good to see him working in conjunction with the various GOP members of Congress who stuck around at the end of last week, neither party should let up on this.

The issue is an easy winner for the Republicans, and continuing the call reduces the Dems to rather pathetic standard retorts like the ones included in the article from Nancy Pelosi, which basically amount to "Anonymous generic sources say that drilling now will only help a little bit, so let's not bother talking about it."

Strangely, the article also claims that Pelosi "called the demands to lift the drilling bans a hoax." (Emphasis mine) That seems to be a very strange choice of words in this instance. A "hoax?" As in P.T. Barnum's fake mermaid, or an April Fool's Joke? Odd.

The article wraps with "Bush called these actions 'vital steps to help reduce pressure on gas prices,' although none of the actions would produce any new oil for years." Didn't AP writer H. Josef Hebert get the memo?