Holy Diver

say Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat?

Obama clears way for oil drilling off US coasts - Yahoo! News

By PHILIP ELLIOTT, Associated Press Writer Philip Elliott, Associated Press Writer –

WASHINGTON – Reversing a ban on oil drilling off most U.S. shores, President Barack Obama on Wednesday announced an expansive new policy that could put oil and natural gas platforms in waters along the southern Atlantic coastline, the eastern Gulf of Mexico and part of Alaska.

Mrs.PatsFanInVa

Drill, Baby, Drill.

Sometimes, when I'm thinking like the passive-agressive woman my mother raised me to be, I think that Obama's doing some of this ***** just to prove to society, once and for all, just how obstructive and self-destructive The Republicans can be.

I mean, think about it; on one hand, this is something the Republicans and conservatives all wanted - it was part of their platform. On the other hand, they've vowed to block every single bill/appointment/whatever he puts before them. Do they vote for it and look like they're agreeing with the president they swore would never agree with them or do they vote against it and look like they don't know what they hell they want - other than to prove, once and for all, that they're the only ones who want to be disagreeable?

It's lose-lose time.

HarkDawg

Obama is just playing the game


hats off to him


we need this to happen..... GOP would be fools to vote against it.


As an Independent... I respect the strategy.

wistahpatsfan

Inversely, it's lose-lose for the Democrats, too. They opposed increased drilling when Bush was POTUS, and now they have to vote it down, or look like liars if they go along with Obama on this. My position is and always has been that we need to establish a "Manhattan Project" for renewable energy and get off the oil addiction. I have seen lukewarm moves by Obama to that and this looks like something Bush would do. Coke or Pepsi? (props to PR) He's turning out to be just another corporate prostitute. What a shock!

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reflexblue

Hes just throwing 13 and BF a bone.

Mrs.PatsFanInVa

No, I disagree, Wistah. He's doing almost exactly what he said he'd do back in August, 2008. The dems knew this when they elected him - it won't be hard to go along with it now.

This was his proposal in 2008:

Sen. Barack Obama suggested he could accept an expansion of offshore oil drilling today if it is in a broader package of energy measures that would free the logjam on energy bills in Congress.

"My interest is in making sure we've got the kind of comprehensive energy policy that can bring down gas prices," Obama said in an interview with The Palm Beach Post.

"If, in order to get that passed, we have to compromise in terms of a careful, well thought-out drilling strategy that was carefully circumscribed to avoid significant environmental damage -- I don't want to be so rigid that we can't get something done."

"The Republicans and the oil companies have been really beating the drums on drilling," Obama said in the Post interview. "And so we don't want gridlock. We want to get something done."

Obama, through his Senate office, issued a written statement welcoming a proposal sent to Senate leaders Friday by 10 senators -- five from each party -- that would lift drilling bans in the eastern Gulf of Mexico within 50 miles of Florida's beaches and in the South Atlantic off Virginia, the Carolinas and Georgia, but only if a state agrees to the oil and gas development along its coast. The states would share in revenues from oil and gas development.

Drilling bans along the Pacific coast and the Northeast would remain in place under this compromise.

Obama Opens the Door to Offshore Drilling | 44 | washingtonpost.com

This is what he said today:

The plan modifies a ban that for more than 20 years has limited drilling along coastal areas other than the Gulf of Mexico. It allows new oil drilling off Virginia's shoreline and considers it for a large chunk of the Atlantic seaboard. At the same time, he's rejecting some new drilling sites that had been planned in Alaska.


He's also pairing the permission to drill along with a bill cutting emissions of pollution-causing greenhouse gases by 17 percent by 2020. The legislation would also provide federal assistance for constructing nuclear power plants and carbon sequestration and storage projects at coal-fired utilities which will go a long way with enviornmentalists.

The dude's no dummy.

PatsWSB47

I think they'll try and say it's insufficient for one reason or another but I don't think they'll try and hold it up long.

Do you like the idea? Off shore drilling, that is

Mrs.PatsFanInVa

Honestly, I don't know enough about it to be preachy or even opinionated.

I'm ambivilant for now, I guess. I don't really like the idea - any time we ruin a shore line or mess with nature I think we're doing ourselves and our world a disfavor and yet I also understand that progress comes with a price and you can't take care of the future if you don't take care of today. It'll put alot of people to work right now and that means today's people will be able to feed their children long enough to have grandchildren - and one can only hope that somewhere along that generational line a better solution will be found.

The bleeding heart in me worries about the dolphins and the whales and the sharks and every other sea creature which might be affected - I love the ocean and her inhabitants - but I also realize that people are important, too.

I think on this one I'll trust the prez. He's not flip-flopped on the issue, he's doing exactly as he said he'd do. There are some really good things in the bill being brought up and as Mick Jagger says, "you can't always get what you want, but if you try sometime, you just might find, you get what you need."

We need energy sources of our own desperately - this seems like a good conglamoration of attempts to supply it from various sources without destroying any one source in the process.

Harry Boy

I gave him credit for doing it earlier this morning here's my link
Something Good To Say (Obama)

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Holy Diver

helps to put the subject of the thread in the subject line.

I scanned the subjects, and forgive me for glancing over your esoteric title, but it could've contained a number of tales about you in a bathrobe or some other shizzzzz ... Ya heard?


please merge if possible.