Is Bush Still Messing with McCain?

Wednesday, September 17th, 2008

George Bush ran one of the nastiest campaigns in history against John McCain in the 2000 Republican primary. Even going so far as to send flyers out to North Carolina voters saying McCain had an illegitimate black child. (Source) The McCains have an adopted black daughter. I think it’s fair to say that for years, John McCain and George Bush had a strained relationship.

But one thing about John McCain is that he won’t let a little thing like his personal principals stand in the way of his blind ambition to become president. John sucked up his personal dislike of W, and became one of the most reliable Bush votes in the US Senate, voting 95% of the time along the Bush line. Since declaring for President, McCain has reversed himself on virtually all the other 5% of issues where he and Bush were politically apart.

You have to almost think George W. Bush still enjoys messing with John McCain.

Yesterday McCain said we cannot bail out AIG. Then Bush bails out AIG late yesterday afternoon, so today McCain reverses himself saying “we had to bail out AIG.” (Source) A 180 degree turn in under 24 hours!

The same thing happened earlier in the campaign on the topic of offshore drilling. McCain was against new offshore drilling, then Bush came out and said, “hey, let’s drill in the Gulf of Mexico” and so McCain had to do another quick turn and become Pro offshore drilling. (Related)

To be fair, McCain did say it would only offer a “psychological” benefit. But then he started chanting, “Drill Here, Drill Now” so maybe he’s just trying to psych out those high gas prices?

Still George Bush has a well documented mean streak. Call it the frat boy prankster in him if you will, but you can’t miss it in his smirk when he thinks he’s landed a zinger to some reporter. For his part, McCain did give Bush only 8 minutes at the RNC this year. Maybe he was worred what W might say?

The way the Bush team doesn’t tip McCain to their decision making, makes me think W’s still enjoying making John squirm as long as he can.

Tags: AIG, Bush, McCain, Offshore Drilling
Posted in Opinion, Politics | 1 Comment »

Drill Here, Drill Now? Maybe Not.

Tuesday, September 16th, 2008

(Source-EcoGeek)

Right now the U.S. House of Representatives is taking up the issue of offshore drilling, with a proposal to allow limited drilling and to fund non-carbon energy sources. Best guess prediction is that this bill will pass, despite Republican opposition.

As you can see from the above graph from EcoGeek though they could approve drilling in your living room and it won’t make a difference in gas prices until maybe 2025. That’s 17 years from now! And the impact? Likely minimal.

T. Boone Pickens, a lifelong Texas oilman, a billionaire, and a SwiftVets financier, says “this is one emergency we can’t drill our way out of,” and he’s right.

McCain knows this too! He has said as much:

“I don’t see an immediate relief, but I do see that exploitation of existing reserves that may exist — and in view of many experts that do exist off our coasts — is also a way that we need to provide relief. Even though it may take some years, the fact that we are exploiting those reserves would have psychological impact that I think is beneficial.” - John McCain (Source)

So what’s with the McCain slogan, “Drill Here, Drill Now”? Pandering to the uninformed. There are many Americans, sadly who don’t pay any attention to the news until it hits them in the gas tank.

Simple solutions may sound good, but rarely provide relief.

External Related Links
5 Reasons Not to Drill Baby Drill
McCain’s call for offshore oil drilling won’t bring relief soon

Tags: McCain, Obama, Offshore Drilling, Pelosi, Pickens
Posted in Environment, Politics, news | 1 Comment »

Obama Agrees With McCain, McCain is Part of the Problem

Monday, August 4th, 2008

Senator McCain has recently been trumpeting that the current energy crisis “has been 30 years in the making” a comment that sparked this reply, from Senator Obama.

“You won’t hear me say this too often, but I couldn’t agree more with the explanation that Sen. McCain offered a few weeks ago. He said, ‘Our dangerous dependence on foreign oil has been 30 years in the making, and was caused by the failure of politicians in Washington to think long term about the future of the country,’ ” Obama said.

“What Sen. McCain neglected to mention was that during those 30 years, he was in Washington for 26 of them. And in all that time, he did little to reduce our dependence on foreign oil,” Obama said. - Source

McCain meanwhile was giving out tire pressure gauges in an attempt to belittle Obama’s comment that properly inflating tires would save fuel. Perhaps someone should have shown McCain this excerpt from CarCare.org.

Proper inflation can also improve gas mileage by more than 3%, when maintained regularly. Keep this in mind: Under-inflated tires can lower gas mileage by 0.4 percent for every 1 psi (pounds per square inch) drop in pressure of all four tires.

Now multiply that 3% fuel savings times the approximately 140,000,000 cars in the U.S. (source) and you end up saving enormous quantities of fuel - virtually immediately.

Compare that to dangerous offshore drilling which won’t produce even 1 gallon of gasoline for about 8-10 years, and consider this:

“The projections in the OCS access case indicate that access to the Pacific, Atlantic, and eastern Gulf regions would not have a significant impact on domestic crude oil and natural gas production or prices before 2030.” (Source

So it looks like those reporters who got the free tire gauges from McCain are likely to be the only Americans he benefits with his “fuel” strategy, at least the only ones not in the Oil Industry.

Update Even McCain’s top surrogates, Joe Lieberman, Charlie Crist, and Arnold Schwarzenegger all have supported “tire inflation” as an important energy saving measure. Seems like only McCain doesn’t get it.

Update 2 Time Magazine reports:

The Bush administration estimates that expanded offshore drilling could increase oil production by 200,000 barrels per day by 2030. We use about 20 million barrels per day, so that would meet about 1% of our demand two decades from now. Meanwhile, efficiency experts say that keeping tires inflated can improve gas mileage by 3%, and regular maintenance can add another 4%. Many drivers already follow their advice, but if everyone else did, we could reduce demand several percentage points immediately. In other words: Obama is right.

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Tags: Election, Environment, McCain, Obama, Offshore Drilling, Oil, Tire Pressure Gauges
Posted in Election 08, Politics | No Comments »