It took an hour for my above test post to show up, as well, so I thought there was either a software glitch, a hack, or that one of the bosses pulled all the previous comments and shut off the comment function for some reason.

All the other threads were working properly, so I was wondering what was going on with this one.

I do not trust McCain and fear Obama for what he is capable of doing to our country. I have a first hand feeling of what Georgia is going through.

volsense on August 16, 2008 at 1:05 PM

Give me a break.

ANWR.

I like the picture of the bear walking on the pipeline.

misterpeasea on August 16, 2008 at 11:03 AM

Oops. I just clicked on the link you provided. That’s exactly what I was talking about.

wise_man on August 16, 2008 at 11:01 AM

A TV ad showing Alaska sumperimposed over the lower 48 would go a long way to educating people the scale about which we are talking. Words just don’t do it.

I married a lady in Delaware. She had no idea how big the West is.

Delaware is about 100 miles long. There is a sign on highway (I think) I-15 in (I think) Nevada that says, “No Services For the Next 108 Miles.”

I told her that you could put the entire State of Delaware out there and no one would notice. She was amazed at the size and openness of the West.

Likewise, I don’t think most people have any idea how vast Alaska is and insignificant in size the ANWR drilling area is.

burt on August 16, 2008 at 7:06 PM

Sorry, wasn’t pointed at you, but at the whole ethanol crowd…

Stuck on stupid.

Romeo13 on August 16, 2008 at 6:55 PM

What is your point? I thought I made a pretty good argument that Thune is a RINO in order to subsidize his constituents at my expense.

burt on August 16, 2008 at 6:36 PM

Yeah, but theres this little thing called WEATHER, and sometimes it just does not rain much… we call these things DROUGHTS…

Now, in a drought, you have to import more food from where it IS raining, which takes… gas… which you won’t have because you will not have the Food to turn it into fuel…

Stuck on stupid.

Senator Thune comes from a state which I believe produces both wheat and sugar beets. The price of wheat has gone up as fast as corn because of the replacement of wheat crop lands to produce corn for the ethanol scam. Sugar beets have the potential to join the gravy train as most of the ethanol being produced for fuel is made from sugar albeit from cane.

Terrye on August 16, 2008 at 11:46 AM

Don’t you trolls for McCain ever get tired of defending the indefensible. No, I don’t want to see Obama win but I don’t believe in lying about McCain’s record either. I simply can’t go along with your unquestioning and uncritical support and don’t intend on glossing over the truth.

Amnesty for the most undeserving from Latin America, prohibiting any drilling in ANWR, the exapanded use of stem cells as if they don’t represent life, the legitimacy of gay marriage are all areas where I disagree with McCain and I will not shut the f**k up and go along with people like you. Useful idiots at best but trolls in your single-minded support of the liberal Democrat at the top of the GOP ticket.

Linky from Demint on it…

Terrye on August 16, 2008 at 4:53 PM

The offshore and Shale prohibitions on drilling both EXPIRE on October 1st.

Whats happened in the past is they get put into omnibus spending bills and signed as a matter of course… but if Bush threatens, and carries through, on vetoing anything the Dems send up with a renewal of the Bans? Done deal…

They expire… its the dirty little secret in Washington that some of us know.

it may be that opening the area to people to that degree might, and probably will, destroy it over time with roads and air fields, pipelines and such.
jeanie on August 16, 2008 at 4:44 PM

If you look at this map, you can see red dot in the green area. That is the proposed drilling area. If they wanted to conserve their own oil infrastructure, they would send a pipe to the west (left from that red dot) to the prudhoe oil area. They wouldn’t have to cross cross the entire area with pipes. As you can see, the proposed drilling site is very close to the other existing infrastructure. You can see more details here. While I don’t know for an absolute fact, it seems to me after reading that page and others, that the entire area would be unharmed. Perhaps 99%. And the area right near the site won’t be toxic and kill all the animals outside the fence.

Do we really just need to stop a vote? I don’t think so. I am not sure, but I heard that there has to be a vote to lift the ban. That is why the GOP has been pushing for an up or down vote. And some of the Republicans, like Thune, who have been supporting the compromise actually claim it will result in more production of all kinds of energy.

I don’t think that they are just wussing out or something they might think this is the best deal they can get with a Democratic majority. And if the Democrats end up with 58 Senate seats it is hard to know what kind of legislation we might see next year.

I still don’t understand what’s logically controversial about it.

JiangxiDad

It’s really simple, though you won’t find many people here who find the argument very persuasive. The feeling among conservationists is that once you’ve violated a virgin ecosystem, you can’t unviolate it, and that there are very, very few virgins left.

Personally, I think it’s a fantasy: All the world’s ecosystems are already violated, they’re not girls, and, barring unexpected and unprecedentedly rapid economic if not evolutionary changes, sooner or later they’ll be prostituted to our economic desires. But that’s not the way that those with quasi-religious reverence for “pristine nature” feel about it.

You don’t have to agree with them or come down on their side to recognize that there’s enough sense to their argument to warrant reflection and consideration. The days when we just set the wildcatters free without much regard for what they did and what they left behind are gone. I suspect that most of even the most ardent DRILL NOW’ers favor as small a footprint as technically and economically feasible. If so, even they are acknowledging that there’s something there worth protecting and preserving.