McCain gets his oil rig photo-op, says coastal drilling will ‘solve our problem’
About a month ago, John McCain hoped to counter-program against Barack Obama’s speech in Berlin with a photo-op that would have captured at least some attention — he’s hop on a helicopter and give a speech from an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico, off the Louisiana coast. It didn’t work out — a barge collision had caused a spill of an estimated 9,000 barrels of fuel into the Mississippi River. The McCain gang didn’t want to visit the rig if the reporters on hand were going to notice the smell of diesel wafting through the French Quarter.
Today, McCain got his second shot at the photo-op he wanted.
Senator John McCain finally headed out to an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico on Tuesday morning to sound his call for more offshore drilling, a refrain he has repeated almost daily in this summer of gas-pump sticker shock. Hurricane Dolly had forced Mr. McCain to cancel a trip to the rig planned in July.
“Americans across our country are hurting because of the cost of energy,” Mr. McCain planned to say on the rig,” after an hour and 15-minute helicopter flight from Kenner, La., a suburb of New Orleans. “Gas prices are through the roof. Energy costs have seeped into our grocery bills, making it more expensive to feed our families. And now
, as people prepare for the winter, they are going to be hit with higher costs for home heating oil. It is time for America to get serious about energy independence, and that means we need to start drilling offshore at advanced oil rigs like this.”
I don’t think “independence” means what McCain thinks it means. If we’re hoping to achieve energy independence, the goal is to be less dependent on oil. Drilling for more oil does the opposite.
McCain added that Obama “has said [expanded coastal drilling] will not ‘solve our problem’ and that ‘it’s not real.’ He’s wrong, and the American people know it.”
Does this make any sense at all? I can’t speak to what the electorate knows or doesn’t, but expanded coastal drilling really won’t solve our problem. Indeed
, McCain argued the same point up until fairly recently, before he abandoned his position in opposition to expanded coastal drilling in order to pander to desperate consumers.
According to his prepared remarks, McCain also argued that a new U.S. energy policy will “require aggressive development of alternative energies like wind, solar, tidal and bio-fuels.”
McCain does realize he’s been voting against these alternative energies for quite a while, doesn’t he?
The Obama campaign’s response was a little long, and I realize that facts don’t really matter to most voters, but it had the benefit of accuracy.
“For three decades, as our energy crisis grew, decision-making in Washington has been rigged against our national interests and the interests of American consumers. And for almost that long
, Senator McCain has been part of the problem. For decades, he has stood with the big oil companies and voted against the development of the alternative energy we need. When a critical proposal came before the Senate late last year that would have provided tax incentives for the development of alternative energy by revoking $13 billion in giveaways to the oil companies
, he was the only Senator who didn’t vote – and we came up one vote short. And now he’s standing with the oil companies in opposing a bipartisan compromise in Congress that would expand offshore drilling and, at the same time, make serious investments in alternative energy to break our dependence on foreign oil. When it comes to solving our energy problems , John McCain is just more of the same and America can’t afford it.”
As long as we’re on the subject, Yglesias reminds us this morning that one of the McCain campaign’s latest ads insists that McCain promises voters he’ll “battle Big Oil.” Yglesias asks, “What’s he going to battle big oil about?”
Good question. At this point, McCain is reading from the oil industry’s playbook, giving the industry everything it wants, including tax cuts and expanded coastal drilling rights. Where, exactly, does the “battle” come in?
StratRat
says:If McSame doesn’t say anything you like, wait a minute and he will. It takes a while to think of a lie for everybody.
Davis X. Machina
says:They got their picture. That’s why they went. The words don’t mean anything.
McCain promises voters he’ll “battle Big Oil.” Yglesias asks, “What’s he going to battle big oil about?”
It’s like starting a bar fight by walking up to a drunk and loudly announcing ‘Hey, fuck me!’
Steve
says:Y’know, an oil rig would make the perfect VP candidate for Team McCain. It doesn’t need vetting, and it produces lots of profit for his oil-company friends….
Condi
says:It doesn’t have to make sense. Coastal oil drilling will solve our energy problem is a simple message for a simple people-the American electorate.
Those of you who think these obvious flip flops and hypocrisy and mis-statements will hurt him haven’t paid good attention to the reign of G.W. Bush.
Republicans may not know how to govern but they know how to win the Presidency.
Obama needs to stop wasting his time sucking up to evangelicals who will never vote for him anyway and start beating the shit out of McCain. Right now that old man is winning the fight. And Obama is showing himself to be just another spineless Democrat.
Go ahead and pick Biden fo VP Obama and give America another reason not to vote for you.
Stephen Stralka
says:Not that long ago, I was telling my friends that even if McCain did win, at the very least he’d be a better president than Bush. I no longer think that.
TheSpiceMustFlow
says:John McCain will lead us into a prosperous time of Cold War. Come, comrade, and warm your hands on the burning American flag.
Condi
says:@5
And this past week we got to see Biden in Georgia trying to out McCain McCain.
I despair for this country. Check out Greenwald today-he reports Biden saying in an interview:
LAUER: [McCain’s] argument — the Democratic Party itself, somewhere in the late 1960s, became weak on national security, at least perceived to be weak — we started to see a party wringing its hands and blaming American for what’s wrong in the world. Now, as we look at the upcoming election, particularly between a war hero and Barack Obama, do you think that’s going to be a major problem for Democrats?
BIDEN: I think that’s what they’re going to revive. There’s truth to that. I ran in 1972 as a young 29-year-old guy who won the Senate seat, being the guy who was viewed as a hawk, because I didn’t join in that mantra.
It was Bill Clinton — and, I might say, me pushing it — saying that you had to go to war in the Balkans to end genocide. It was John McCain initially saying, no no no you can’t do that — the Republicans voting, no no no we can’t do that.
Bernard HP Gilroy
says:Well, this is in alignment with most of his “maverick”ness — he’s a fighter, he just doesn’t know what he’s fighting for or against.
Condi
says:Let’s go to bat for another shitty little country and get into a tiff with New-Q-Ler armed Russia. Let’s expose the world to the risk of destruction and destroy our economy at the same time. And then there is the global warming we’ll be doing nothing to combat. Just drilling for more oil to burn and pollute the environment.
Statistically I’ve got about 25 years left to live. Good for me!
lou
says:McCain, running for chief steward of American profligacy.
(see the Moyer’s interview with Andrew Bacevich:
http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/08152008/transcript1.html)
An excerpt:
BILL MOYERS: Here is one of those neon sentences. Quote, “The pursuit of freedom, as defined in an age of consumerism, has induced a condition of dependence on imported goods, on imported oil, and on credit. The chief desire of the American people,” you write, “is that nothing should disrupt their access to these goods, that oil, and that credit. The chief aim of the U.S. government is to satisfy that desire, which it does in part of through the distribution of largesse here at home, and in part through the pursuit of imperial ambitions abroad.” In other words, you’re saying that our foreign policy is the result of a dependence on consumer goods and credit.
ANDREW BACEVICH: Our foreign policy is not something simply concocted by people in Washington D.C. and imposed on us. Our foreign policy is something that is concocted in Washington D.C., but it reflects the perceptions of our political elite about what we want, we the people want. And what we want, by and large – I mean, one could point to many individual exceptions – but, what we want, by and large is, we want this continuing flow of very cheap consumer goods.
We want to be able to pump gas into our cars regardless of how big they may happen to be, in order to be able to drive wherever we want to be able to drive. And we want to be able to do these things without having to think about whether or not the book’s balanced at the end of the month, or the end of the fiscal year. And therefore, we want this unending line of credit.
BILL MOYERS: You intrigued me when you wrote that “The fundamental problem facing the country will remain stubbornly in place no matter who is elected in November.” What’s the fundamental problem you say is not going away no matter whether it’s McCain or Obama?
ANDREW BACEVICH: What neither of these candidates will be able to, I think, accomplish is to persuade us to look ourselves in the mirror, to see the direction in which we are headed. And from my point of view, it’s a direction towards ever greater debt and dependency.
independent thinker
says:McCain’s position on drilling shows lazy thinking. On a tangential but related point, Jack Cafferty over at CNN had some choice words to say about McCain’s approach to issues. I don’t always agree with Cafferty, but this was totally right on:
http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/08/18/cafferty.mccain/index.html
james k. sayre
says:It was OK for McCain to fly out to that off-shore drilling rig, now that the massive four hundred thousand barrel oil spill of No. 6 fuel oil in the Mississippi River in New Orleans three weeks ago has largely been dispersed, cleaned up and forgotten…
Tom Cleaver
says:Does this make any sense at all? I can’t speak to what the electorate knows or doesn’t, but expanded coastal drilling really won’t solve our problem. Indeed, McCain argued the same point up until fairly recently, before he abandoned his position in opposition to expanded coastal drilling in order to pander to desperate consumers.
Unfortunately, 63% of our fellow morons, er, I mean citizens, agree with Grampy on this, including 58% of Californians and 60% of Floridians, who really ought to know better.
And this is why Obama, Pelosi, and the rest of the Democrats – who do know b etter – have changed their position on this.
If Obama doesn’t start getting out in front of this stuff, to the point where the media are forced to report what he says, you can all start practicing saying “President McCain.” And I’ll start practicing changing my “a” and adding “eh?” for when I move to Canada.
petorado
says:The New York Times has a good piece that emphasizes why Big Oil wants offshore drilling so badly — they have lost their sway in former banana republics and are being pushed out of their spheres of influence by nationalized oil companies. The URL for the piece is http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/19/business/19oil.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin .
Oil companies have been busy boosting their own stock value by repurchasing shares of their own company with over a third of their total profits while investing only 6% of profits in new exploration. They need the known offshore resources as their last refuge in a world increasingly hostile to their dominance. Offshore drilling may offer the least interference from unfriendly foreign governments, but at over $20 million per new drilling platform and the expense of doing business over 50 miles out to sea, just don’t expect this oil to be cheap.
Chainsaw
says:Shimon Tzabar wrote a wonderfully sarcastic but true book called “The White Flag Principle or How To Lose A War (and Why). One of his theses was that countries’ infrastructure degrades to the point where they can no longer stay competitive, but it is so disruptive and expensive to tear up and replace one’s infrastructure that many countries don’t do it – they just deteriorate and don’t recover. If these countries lose a war, though, the enemy comes in, destroys the obsolete infrastructure, replaces it after the war with new infrastructure, and sets up international finance and trade whereby this can all be paid for, often impoverishing or harming the WINNER of the war.
I begin to suspect the elite Democrats and Republicans together decided at some point that this is the only hope for America. So they have worked to train the populace to behave as though we have just been invaded by a foreign army, dismantled our industrial base, destroyed the competence, morale, and reputation of our military, indebted us to foreign governments gigantic amounts we can’t repay, violated every possible standard of civilized, or even human, behavior, with no apology but a bluster and a snigger, privatized and sold our scientific establishment, dismantled the public-service side of the medical profession, offended pretty much every potential ally – there’s not much left to do but to get all worked up in hysterical projection about some imaginary threat that builds against us as we stack weapons at the border of some loser of a country.
Wait a minute – aren’t we doing that right now?
Rich
says:Facts are important only to the reality-based community, and that community already knows that off-shore drilling for relatively small amounts of oil that would go on the world market anyway doesn’t pass the laugh test as far as prices at the pump are concerned.
So pandering to the ignorant, the uninformed, the gullible, i.e., the majority of the American electorate, is really what’s going on, and it will probably work. Doesn’t matter that McSame can ‘black’ today, and ‘white’ tommorrow. When the gullible hear what they like that’s what they remember.
Just more ridiculous propaganda, but that’s what drives our alleged democracy in 2008. The Dems never seem to figure that one out.
Stevio
says:Is there any chance that the helicopter will forget to bring him back?….
OkieFromMuskogee
says:Let’s drill for oil everywhere, right now. In the Arctic, off every state’s coastline, even in your back yard.
Our kids and grandkids will be grateful for our farsighted wisdom.
citizen_pain
says:Again I ask:
If offshore drilling is the magic bullet, the cure all for our energy crisis (as it is touted by the big oil sponsored republican party), then why didn’t McCain, Bu$h, and the rest of their handlers start offshore drilling when they had the majority in Congress, and had the WH?
Another question: the oil companies could have easily expanded their drilling in areas they already leased and had permission to drill on? Why did they not take the initiative themselves?
hark
says:I agree with Tom #13 that Obama needs to get out in front of this stuff, but the question is, why doesn’t he? Where is the bold leadership, the vision, to get us out of this addiction to oil? Kennedy said we’re going to the moon in 1961, and by God, we got there in 1969. Why can’t Obama say we’re getting off oil by 2020, and by God, come up with a workable plan to get us there? And to show the economy won’t shrink, but will grow, that millions of new jobs will be created? Because it’s true, if we just get off our asses and do it. We won World War II against two super powers when we didn’t even have a standing army. Roosevelt just said, do it, and by God, we did it.
Where the hell is the spirit we used to have?
I’m sorry to say this, but I think Obama is running a timid, increasingly typical Democratic campaign, so terrified of the “liberal” label that he’s compromising himself into ignominious defeat. And if he manages to win, he’ll have no mandate, no grand plan for the future. Sure, he’s a billion times better than McCain, but the times call, the challenges demand, something more than mediocrity, and nobody is rising to the occasion in this country.
And I wish to hell he’d stop this pandering to religious America. This is a secular government, and our problems are secular. Praying to God isn’t going to get us the hell off oil.
BuzzMon
says:McCain was mis-quoted, he did not say that he would “battle” Big Oil.
He said that he would PADDLE Big Oil, you know, a little kinky foreplay.
Chad
says:Hell yeah we should drill our own oil. I love oil. It runs my car, heats my home, runs the machines that make our economy run, runs our transportation like railroads, planes, and trucks. It helps to make plastics, it helps our farmers and agriculture. Heck, you can’t chuck a rock anywhere without hitting something that is somehow related to oil. Oil is great and I wish we had more of it. More oil means more jobs. More oil means more money. More oil means a better economy. More oil means maintaining our standard of living. I LOVE OIL!!! It’s God’s gift to us.
Shalimar
says:21.On August 19th, 2008 at 2:42 pm, BuzzMon said:
McCain was mis-quoted, he did not say that he would “battle” Big Oil.
He said that he would PADDLE Big Oil, you know, a little kinky foreplay.
If that is McCain’s idea of foreplay, then wouldn’t consummating the relationship plug up the well and leave the country worse off energy-wise than before?
Shalimar
says:Chad, you’re mind-numbingly ignorant. Check the percentage of our oil demand that has been supplied by domestic consumption over the last 50 years. We have already pulled our easily-accessed oil out of the ground. We will never be self-sufficient again if we keep depending on oil for so large a percentage of our energy needs. And burning such a valuable resource away in our automobiles when there are so many thousands of other critical, non-replaceable usages for oil is just stupid.
Shalimar
says:*domestic production
slappy magoo
says:“McCain added that Obama ‘has said [expanded coastal drilling] will not ’solve our problem’ and that ‘it’s not real.’ He’s wrong, and the American people know it.’”
Does this remind ANYONE ELSE of the movie “Idiocracy?” When Americans have to be TOLD that using energy drink to irrigate farmland will not raise crops?
Espanded coastal drilling will NOT solve our problems, only delay them! Obama is right! No amount of drilling is worth a damn for long without coming up with ways to REDUCE OUR NEED for fossil fuels. All we’ll be doing is passing that bill to future generations after we’re dead and used up, supposedly, all “our oil” Expanded coastal drilling is not a problem solver in and of itself!
“But it’s got electrolytes!”
mike
says:McCain is not serious about ending our dependence on foreign oil. He’s serious about getting elected. Most people he’s trying to reach don’t know about his voting record regarding alternative energy and don’t know the realities of what off-shore drilling can and can not do. But, they do know that drilling will produce more oil and they think that oil will come out of the ground tomorrow and will reduce the gas prices that are eating into their monthly budget. So, McCain will get some votes for this.
joey
says:About the only thing Obama will get from kicking the shit out of McCain is the media screaming about how badly McCain is being treated by Obama.
He needs to get more ads out there not just debunking McCain’s bogus rhetoric but showing him for the buffoon he is. Stop “respecting his great service to our country” crap and redress him as a doddering old fool running around showing off his metals whose primary concern is how much saliva to drool. Paint McCain as the dog who jumps whenever big oil blows the whistle. Show his lobbyist campaign members standing with the interests they represent all with a rope around McCain in the center of the crowd being pulled every time these self interests whisper in the lobbyists’ ears.
Stop treating him like a “worthy opponent” and treat him like the joke he is. Mentioning his name should never fail to get a big laugh at the idea that he thinks he could be a good president.
Show Lieberman and Graham as Cerebus the two headed dog at the gates of Hades pointing to a confused McCain looking for car keys which are on his head.
The guy is a ill tempered joke treat him as one…the stakes are too high to lose to this bastard. McCain is motivated by profit and power…Obama is motivated by good government and concern for the people. It is the end of America if McCain wins no matter how you try to ignore the past 8yrs, 4 more like ’em and we’re done..
McCain is already dead and so is the world of politics he represents yet these ghosts continue to haunt us with their presence.
Chad
says:Okay, you all have converted me. Damn you oil. I hate you oil. Oil, you are the worst thing to ever happen to mankind. It’s because of you oil that we’ve evolved this far in society. It’s because of you oil that we’re able to heat our houses. How dare you infringe on my daily life like that. That’s the governments job to do that. I want more government, and less oil. I want oil to be outlawed and to make everyone buy a horse. You want to heat your home, tough, put on a sweater. No more oil for that. Oil, I wish you would just burn in hell. Why did you ever have to enter our lives? Oh, I hate oil so much now, it’s just plain evil. It’s vile. It serves no purpose anymore. Let’s all gather together on the steps of the White House and call for a ban of all oil. We can do this if we put our minds together on a common front to push oil into oblivion.
Shalimar
says:Still a lying a-hole, eh Chad? You know nobody argued anything like that, so they couldn’t have convinced you.
Hannah
says:How ironic that McBush used up 2.5 hours worth of helicopter fuel for his little photo-op. And he couldn’t even inflate the tires ::snark:: to help it get better mileage. Oh well, I suppose his friends in the oil business paid for it, so what does he cares?
Hannah
says:care, not cares
Hannah
says:Think Progress has more:
http://thinkprogress.org/2008/08/19/mccain-chevron-oil-rig/
Check it out.
Heraldblog
says:Chad, are you aware that US oil production peaked about 35 years ago?
Always hopeful
says:“…one of the McCain campaign’s latest ads insists that McCain promises voters he’ll “battle Big Oil.” Yglesias asks, “What’s he going to battle big oil about?”
Uh, he meant to say he’ll be battling FOR big oil.
We don’t need to know what he’ll battle big oil about. He’s a POW dammit, he’ll do it!!!
carl jochen
says:Americas transportation system represents over 1/4 of our total energy use and is an even higher percentage of petroleum use. By enclosing and automating a national personal transit system powered by wind and solar energy we could not only convert this amount to renewable sources, we could save over 40,000 lives every year by eliminating driver error as a cause of automobile accidents. Furthurmore, all of the technology required to do it is being used in one form or another today. For more information, check out the national personal transit blog at npts2020.blogspot.com.