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Saturday, June 28, 2008
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U.S. Senate and House Republicans introduced bills this week that include lifting the moratorium on finalizing rules for oil shale development and production, according to redOrbit.com. From the article:
House and Senate Republicans picked up on President Bush's request to open up oil shale exploration in Utah and other domestic oil production options with two bills introduced Thursday. Each bill would remove the existing ban on the Interior Department from finalizing regulations to allow oil shale exploration on public lands. It would be a means to encourage companies to seek out producing oil in the West...
The Senate Republicans introduced the Gas Price Reduction Act of 2008, which also calls for oil exploration in the outer continental shelf, increase federal money for plug-in cars and increased staff for the Commodities Future Trading Commission. "Our bill can be summed up in four words: 'Find more, use less,'" said Sen. Alexander Lamar, R-Tenn., at a press conference Thursday with 20 Republican Senators, including Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, and Sen. Bob Bennett, R-Utah...
Bennett said Utah has a pilot project moving forward on state land that could prove as early as later this summer how technology works to produce oil shale...
But Chase Huntley, energy policy advisor for The Wilderness Society said oil shale development is a "cruel fiction on the American people, promising a false solution to high gasoline prices that instead would hand over potentially tens of thousands of acres of federal lands to oil shale speculators. "This bill falsely promises that oil shale will lower gasoline prices, when in fact the industry is years if not decades away from proving the economic viability, technical feasibility, and environmental safety of the technologies needed to squeeze oil from rock," Huntley said in a statement. Huntley said the technology to develop oil shale is not ready and its environmental impacts -- particularly how much water it needs to be developed -- are not understood. "Pushing the BLM to finalize rules governing commercial leasing and production of oil shale now is irresponsible," Huntley said...
Meanwhile, the Republicans from the House Western Caucus introduced the Americans for American Energy Act, which also removes the moratorium from the Interior Department...The House bill is more extensive than the Senate one and includes opening up oil drilling in the Arctic Natural Wildlife Refuge. The Senate bill purposely left that proposal out, Alexander said, because some Democrats have problems with it.
"2008 pres"
8:00:47 AM 
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From The Denver Post: "One-third of Colorado registered voters are not affiliated with a political party. In New Mexico, Democrats outnumber Republicans by nearly 200,000, yet the state routinely votes for the GOP presidential candidate. Montana voters don't even register with a party. Brimming with individualistic, self-reliant, libertarian-leaning voters, the Rocky Mountain West will play a pivotal role this election season -- a year when independent voters are expected to make or break John McCain's and Barack Obama's presidential bids. Each candidate has his challenges in courting that independent streak. Voters here in recent elections have backed individual candidates regardless of political affiliation and have responded to messages emphasizing economic populism, fiscal discipline and the balance between individual rights and governmental protections...Because Democrats have lost most of the Southern states to the GOP and only a few battleground states remain, both campaigns are pouring resources into the region. Though short on electoral votes, Colorado, Nevada and New Mexico would have given John Kerry the White House in 2004. Those three states plus, perhaps surprisingly, Montana could go for either candidate this year, political analysts say."
"2008 pres"
7:29:15 AM
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Daniel Larison (via The American Conservative):
Yet to a much greater degree than today, as Reihan knows, Baghdad used to be a relatively integrated city that saw intermarriage and mixed neighbourhoods filled with members of different sects. Sectarian identity did not used to possess quite the same political significance that it acquired immediately before and ever since the 2005 elections, but once it became a badge that determined where you could live, who your friends could be and what kind of name you should give when confronted by armed goons all of that went to pieces. Harmonious and cosmopolitan it may not have been, but it was far more so in the "bad old days" than it has been since, which is really what is behind Klein's point about the cleansing of sectarian enemies out of mixed neighbourhoods. Destructive sectarianism has restored some measure of peace in the same way that the burning of the Greek and Armenian quarters in Smyrna more or less ended the Greco-Turkish conflict, which is to say in the worst possible way.
The point isn't that Baghdad has not become a multifaith enclave, but that it used to be something like that and was then turned into a highly segregated and divided city thanks to the mix of invasion, insecurity and sectarian-cum-democratic politics. Hence, the nightmarish violence of 2006 has subsided into merely horrible because most of the potential victims of new sectarian violence have been pushed into new parts of the country, fled to Syria and Jordan or elsewhere or were killed in the first waves. And this is dubbed success. This was the point Klein was making here[^]the causes of reduced violence are many and some have nothing to do with the additional brigades, and some are the after-effects of the magnificent failure of the occupation to fulfill its obligations to secure the population of the country it ostensibly controlled. Meanwhile, "surge" defenders would very much like to credit the change in tactics with most or all of the improvements, and then allow this reduction in violence to make it seem as if something fundamental had changed about a society in which armed gangs were butchering civilians just a year and a half ago for happening to be in the wrong district. That is what I call an unpersuasive case.
"2008 pres"
6:42:58 AM
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Political Wire: "Sen. Barack Obama enters the fall campaign with a tight lead, 43% to 38%, over Sen. John McCain, according to a new Time magazine poll of registered voters. The poll shows Obama gaining only a slight bounce from Hillary Clinton's departure from the campaign early this month."
Political Wire: "A new SurveyUSA poll in Ohio finds Sen. Barack Obama edging Sen. John McCain in a presidential match up, 48% to 46%."
"2008 pres"
6:40:35 AM
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© Copyright 2009 John Orr.
Last update: 3/15/09; 2:34:08 PM.
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