You also need to make up your mind. When you said that “Obama took a compromise position that is in the best interest[s] of the United [States and] its citizens,” you are suddenly taking the position that drilling for oil is indeed, what needs to be done.

The vast majority of Republicans do favor a comprehensive approach of drilling for our own known oil and developing new energy sources. You forgot to mention the other main difference in the candidates, which is that McCain favors increasing nuclear energy, whereas Obama supports it “if” it can be done in an “environmentally responsible way” (another perceived position change that really says nothing at all, since “environmentally responsible” means different things to different people).

Furthermore, Obama did not take a compromise position on the drilling issue. Those that aren’t intelligent enough to parse his actual statement don’t realize that he, once again, used the “if” qualifier saying he would be willing to compromise “if” he had to, in order to pass a comprehensive energy package. He knows that the likelihood of having to make that compromise is slim, since many pundits believe that the Democrats will gain a veto-proof majority in Congress. Every money-spending, inflation-raising item that is part of the Democratic agenda will sail through into law. Obama’s cleverly worded statement is meant to appease the 75% of Americans who support new drilling. Sadly, a huge percentage of them are not smart enough to realize that he made no concession at all!

John McCain has ben advocating more drilling and exploring new technologies for several months now.

Oil futures are what drives the market and the current price of oil is a direct reflection of predictions (gambling) on what the price will be five years down the road. Announcing plans to immediately explore the untapped known resources certainly have an effect on the price five years down the road.

This Congress needs to get it through their heads that adopting a policy of both drilling and aggressively exploring alternatives will dramatically lower the price of oil, since separately and collectively both reduce demand. They need to pass legislation yesterday! It should be an interesting return from their taxpayer-paid five week vacation.

It’s a shame that the first woman to ever be the Senate Majority leader is representing her gender and Party in such a poor, abrasive light. She is, in essence, telling the American public, “Although you elected me to represent you, you are far too stupid to have a say in this matter.” Imagine such an elitist sentiment being attributed to a Democrat. If she were any more elitist, I’d say she would be an excellent Democratic Presidential candidate!

Also, this is hopefully making everyone realize that a country that runs on oil can’t go on forever, and demand will continue to go down for years. In addition to the environmental problems drilling causes, why continue to throw our money into oil? It will run out at some point, and it’s used in a lot of other products like plastic…yet we keep burning it. Drill here drill now is a nice-sounding slogan, but like so many other sound-byte-friendly Republican messages, the issue is more complicated than a simple slogan.

If you re-read my statement, you will see that I did not state that China was drilling in U.S. territorial waters. They have, however, just signed a lease agreement with Cuba to drill in Cuban waters, just 50 miles off the coast of Florida. Here is a link to one article that discusses Cuba’s agreement with China and other countries to drill in Cuban waters of the Florida Straight. onenewsnow.com

Because of advances in directional slant drilling techniques, it is possible to drill from under the U.S. territorial waters in the Florida Straights from the Cuban side of those same Florida Straights. Contrary to naive public opinion, there are not two separate oil reserves in the Florida Straights; it is one oil reserve that is divided by an imaginary legislated line.

I agree 100% with your position on developing alternative energy sources. Although drilling for our own oil will certainly bring prices down (because of increases in supply vs. demand), there will always be a finite anount of oil that will eventually be depleted. That finite amount needs to be reserved for processes (plastics, fertilizers, cosmetics, etc.) and vehicles (airplanes, for example) that will depend upon oil well into the foreseeable future.

The current cost of solar panels is far too exhorbitant to make them a viable alternative energy source. That is about to change, however. With new technologies being developed by companies like nanosolar and countries like China and Korea making plans to mass produce solar panels, the price for panels will surely come down. Estimates range from two to ten years as the timetable for the dowward pring trend to begin.

I will never understand the fear of nuclear energy that runs so rampant in this country. There has only been one nuclear accident in the history of its use (Chernobyl, which utilized the problematic RBMK design, only utilized in the Soviet Union) and one overblown incident that was equally overdramaticized by a liberal Jane Fonda movie (Three Mile Island – “The China Syndrome”). There are already more than 100 commercial nuclear plants operating in the United States, although the last new one to come online was in 1996. New advances in the recycling of spent fuel rods have made it possible to recover 90% of the nuclear “waste,” often cited by environmentalists as a further reason to halt nuclear reactor development.

All in all, I agree that we need to explore every possible energy alternative and choose the ones that are most practical to reduce our dependence upon oil (particularly foreign oil). If not for environmental or economic reasons, the country’s national security should be reason enough. In the meantime, because we will always need oil for many other things besides our automobiles and power generators, we should be exploring ways to provide that oil from our own available resources.