Nancy's Pragmatism

One wonders whether the selection of McCain's Alaskan pro-drilling running mate and the GOP's humongous post VP selection, post-convention bounce had any thing to do with this decision.

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) said Monday morning that the newest Democratic energy bill will be brought to the floor under normal rules and will be subject to a vote on a Republican alternative that is likely to call for even more drilling than Democrats are prepared to swallow. [SNIP]

The move is a dramatic departure from Democrats’ pre-August recess strategy, in which they brought up each of their energy bills under suspension of the rules and, in doing so, avoided having any votes on Republican measures calling for offshore drilling. But by embracing this strategy, Democrats also failed to get the two-thirds majority necessary to pass the majority of their energy bills.

And check this out:

A leadership aide said last week that Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-Calif.) adoption of a pro-drilling position was a strategic one designed to bring the party in line with its presidential nominee, Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.), and give vulnerable caucus members political cover heading into the November elections.

For the Democrats, it's not about the welfare of the people but about keeping their jobs and about staying in line with their capricious candidate whose positions change with the wind--a wind so apparently strong that it ought to be considered an alternative energy source. Surprised? Me neither.

(Thanks to Hot Air)

Comments

[Original Pechanga]

Nancy take a while to understand what the PEOPLE want. Not that we matter too much to her, but she's obviously concerned about her majority

[me]

So on the one hand Baldi your gang complains that the Dems were not for drilling then your running buddies complain when the Dems do what you want. It's sort of like Paliin being for the bridge to nowhere before she was agsinst the bridge but kept the pork money anyway.

[Jonn Lilyea]

Maybe if the Democrats had done the right thing six weeks ago, instead of waiting for it to be politically advantageous (heck, political survival, at this point), you might have a point, me. But it has to look like they're going to lose the election for them to do what's best for Americans. George Bush did the right thing at the right time...Pelosi went on a book tour.

[James]

next thing you know the democrats are going to start saying that it was their idea originally to drill, use clean coal, and build more nuclear plants

[Tully]

Headline: Pelosi Folds Like Cheap Suit

[Original Pechanga]

"Me" fails to mention that both Senators Obama and Biden were FOR the bridge to nowhere and voted TWICE for it.

Good for Governor Palin to get it right by not building that bridge.

James, IF they vote for drilling, I'd be MORE than happy to give them credit. Just Drill, Baby.

[Trish]

"me," honey, who says we're complaining? I for one am thrilled.
It's just a shame that they can't do it because it's right for the country, but only because politics force them to.

[me]

There are few issues here:
1) Oil companies already have access to some public lands with oil deposits and they have not developed those. If you folks in the redstate posse are truly concerned about drilling for oil maybe you should address that first. Oil companies won't drill these lands until oil prices are far far higher than what we have seen so far.

2) Drilling will not make a dent in the cost of fuel or the reliance on corrupt foreign governments i.e. Bush familiy friends like Bandar "Bush" Al Saud and the Bin Laden family to name a few. If you guys were serious about this issue you would boycott goods made in China. Instead this is about that shiney frivolous thing over there that you repubs will forget about in 3 months just like the ever changing justifications for Iraq.

3)If drilling for the few months of oil that remain on American lands is what it takes to get wind and solar going then that sounds like a reasonable trade off to those of us in the reality based community.

4) Many Dems have been for clean coal especially the ones from coal producing states. Also some environmentalist are becoming more receptive to nuclear because it is cleaner than oil. etc. It is causing big arguments. Me personally I am happy to see that you folks can finally agree with the French that nuclear is the way to go.

5)Sara Palin has been going around lying that she was against the bridge to no where. As I said before she was for it before she was against it and after she was against it she spent her left over pork money on other things. Obama and Bidden have not been going around saying one thing or the other about their vote on the bridge so that is besides the point. The operative word is liar.

[scrapiron]

I read a lot of the bill today and it has more strings attached than Hussein O and is about as stupid. It is a no drilling, drilling bill. It will not produce one barrel of oil in 20 years, about the time gas is $50 per gallon and all the democrats have been hanged. For once I wish the left wingers had been right when they accused GWB of setting up to get rid of all of them. He didn't but should have made Hitler look like a weenie.

[scrapiron]

Is it too late, he has a few months?

[scrapiron]

Go over to http://jammiewearingfool.blogspot.com/ and see a real pig with lipstick.

[Wayne]

Well ME, if you were such an expert on oil companies, you would be aware of the fact that of the AVAILABLE leases the oil companies have access to, many of them are still tied up in lawsuits with various environmental/liberal groups to prevent them from being exploited (and in some cases even to be surveyed for oil).

Also, most of these are unexplored deep water leases. Even surveying them is very expensive. If the computer models the oil guys use for predicting the presence of oil shows only spotty deposits or no major bubbles that are going to be easily exploited, they won't spend the money to do so. Deep drilling is expensive and anything less than the cost of getting it (for a profit!!!) is not a financially viable proposition.

Libs bleat that the oil companies should turn these leases back over to the government if they aren't drilling on them (even though they paid vast sums of money for them). Perhaps you are unaware that there is far more wealth in those leases than just oil.

There are enormous deposits of other mineral wealth out there on them like a whole host of metals used by the aerospace industry, gold, uranium. coal, and all kinds of other useful stuff (it doesn't end at the shorelines you know!!).

Also, there is another energy source that exists in quantities that may dwarf oil into insignificance.

Our coastal shelves are covered with layers of an ice-like material called methane hydride. Basically its like a dry ice made of frozen methane gas. This is the same gas that causes explosions in coal mines and that some communities are starting to tap off of their sewage treatment and landfills to use it for power generation.

The temperature and pressure of the ocean floor keeps this stuff frozen and bringing it to the surface causes it to sublimate like dry ice - but the gas is explosive so you can imagine that mining it is going to be a difficult proposition and not something we can do, yet. Several oil platforms have been burned and sunk due to MH accidents!

The estimated amount of this fuel off the world's coastlines is approximately 20 times the historical known volume of oil that has ever been discovered in all the world. Say 2,000 years worth of fuel at current usage rates.

If you had your hands on such an energy source (that you'd likely be the first folks who figured out how to bring it up from the ocean floor) would you give it back to the government? Not if you didn't want to get killed by your stockholders!!!

The problem with the Demo's stand against offshore drilling is that most of the banned leases have been mapped. They are larger deposits than the deep ones, in shallow water, near existing oil collection networks, and in every way easier and quicker to get to.

Nancy Pelhosi told a horrific lie, too.

Almost all of these banned sites can be producing at full capacity within 1 to 3 years, not 10. That was what the oil companies stated in sworn testimony to Congress (I fall asleep to CSPAN and so I often wake up and hear the stuff most people don't). She took a statement (where they said the most difficult to get to leases might take as much as 10 years) and told it to the media about all of them like she was sweeping dirt under a rug.

Speaking of rugs, ANWAR.

Imagine taking a oriental rug about 16 foot by 19 foot in size. Drop a quarter on it. That's the size of the oil production area they want to produce from. The area where this is isn't some beautiful mountain glenn either. It's a flat, mosquito infested swampy plain that is about 100 miles from any pretty part of the park.

My Dad's been up there in the area and there is nothing more attractive there than there is on the moon...except the oil. It is 80 miles from the North Slope oil fields, so running a pipe to connect to the Alaska pipeline is no big stretch. We could be producing there in a couple of years if only you folks would get out of the way.

[Trish]

"me"--

First, the bridge to nowhere:
unlike a certain Democrat who claimed he was ALWAYS against the war in Iraq even though he voted for it, Palin never claimed she was always against the bridge. So the "for it before against it" applies to the former hypocrite, not the latter truth-teller. Palin did cancel that project; everything she said was true.

Please note: there is no such thing as "clean coal," only cleaner coal. Coal is no sane person's fuel of choice. Even the so-called "clean" variety is a serious pollutant, and its retrieval is difficult and dangerous. It is not a desirable fuel by any reasonable standard.

I'm thrilled that the French agree with the stand the American Right has taken about nuclear energy all along. What a pity the left will not allow it to happen.