Was that sarcasm?

Here's my "list" that anyone can compare with Ryan's...

1. That all Federal restrictions on drilling be lifted and all future drilling rights be determined by the individual States. This way, the revenue from the leases are going into the State coffers, rather than back into the Federal "bottomless pit" where they will never be seen again. Examples of this system working? Alaska and Alabama are my "Top Two" in this regard, and not simply in matters of crude oil drilling.
2. The only Federal requirements on refinery or nuclear power construction should be those concerning National Security... the "Where, When and How" questions should be completely up to the individual States. This, more than any other factor, will ensure that our ability to refine oil and produce clean electricity with NO fear of a "centralized" system that would leave us open to attack or damage by natural disaster.
3. We have all seen the results of Federal "emissions" regulations (worse still, those coupled with State regulations, like in CA) to the refining industry here in the US. One, single standard set of regulations that determine the "mix" of all gasoline fuels (diesel, too) would do TWO things immediately: it would reduce the cost to make the gasoline nationwide, and it would boost our national ability to provide gasoline "nationally" in a time of emergency. In other words, gasoline from Texas could easily be shipped to California if CA couldn't provide all it needed for its industry and civilian needs. I have NEVER seen evidence that California is any "cleaner" because of its much more stringent requirements of additives to gasoline, so let's stop requiring them.
4. I will not listen to arguments that "national expectations" on fuel economy are unreasonable... they are not. I have DRIVEN cars that have gotten 45 MPH... as has Jambo, and this as far back as 1990. These were affordable, usable and perfectly functional Mitsubishi products that managed to wrack up more than 200,000 miles before dying tragic deaths (to collisions... not wear-and-tear). This is FUNCTIONAL, EXISTING technology that only needs to be implemented on a national scale, and if enough extraneous regulation is removed from the formula on the gasoline-production end of the equation, then some Federal guidelines on fuel economy on the automotive-production end of the equation might not be a bad thing. So, please... enough with the "solar-powered airplane". No one suggested that here, we're simply not that stupid.

The new slogan of the DNC seems to be "We can't drill our way to prosperity." If we look at the literal application of these words, we can see that they are patently UNTRUE. We COULD drill our way to a very prosperous future... but it would do NOTHING to guaranty our ability to remove our dependence on foreign sources of oil. Our domestic production could be increased by a factor of ten, but our society would still be REQUIRING 75% of all crude oil needed from foreign sources. THAT is the "ball and chain" of a free-market system. Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, Russia, even Great Britain ALL have nationalized oil-production industries with NO futures-speculation allowed in the formula... currently, the US is the only large-capacity crude oil producer that does NOT maintain a curb on speculation (since 2003) AND no national crude oil production means (meaning ALL our oil is drilled by private industry with NO guarantees that it will end up in American refineries).

I AM NOT advocating a nationalized system of drilling and production... I NEVER will. I am stating fact: we can drill every drop of oil we can, now and for the next 50 years, and the only control we could hope to gain over our society's dependence on oil would be to "glut" the market price down to something we could afford. That, my friends, DOES NOT EQUAL safety and security in regards to a resource as vital to the US as crude oil. NOTING terrifies me like the thought of our society and its security "hanging" on the whims of a global futures market that could easily be "controlled" by the likes of Saudi Arabia, Russia, Venezuela, or even China.

THAT is why I say we MUST begin a program, on a national level, to REDUCE our dependence on oil that we CAN'T supply to ourselves if we needed it. If the world is a happy, friendly place and we CHOOSE to purchase 100 billion barrels of crude to fuel our SUV's every year, that's fine... but we MUST be able to fuel our trucks, trains and planes DOMESTICLY to ensure that when the world is no longer friendly, we can still function as a nation-state when the "tap" runs dry at the import docks.