That's all well and good...

... and Nancy and Co. deserve all the credit for what you are detailing, but it doesn't address the validity of Mac's message over Obama's. After all, Nancy isn't running for President.

Maybe a better way to put it is the one I have been using for months (hell, years here): environmental concerns are fine, and we can work towards a "fossil-fuel free" future as much as anyone, BUT we must be able to function as a society IN THE MEAN TIME.

In other words, we can force (DNC plan) or give incentives to (RNC plan) companies and industries that can and will develop alternative fuels and/or more efficient vehicles with the goal of being "petroleum-free" in even as little as ten years, but the simple reality is that WE STILL NEED TO FUNCTION in that intervening ten years!

What the real liberal in America doesn't understand is that raising corporate taxes only drives the price of products UP, hurting the consumer and lowering Federal revenues in the long run. Raising the mean average income tax does the same thing, only faster and more efficiently, as we can see by the logical conclussion to any one of Obama's courses of action should he be elected President.

What the ultra-conservative in America doesn't understand (or refuses to see) is that unregulated "free-trade" economics NEVER has the "common man's" best interest at heart. As long as their are trading firms that can make an 18% to 27% margin of profit while selling crude oil futures are 25% to 50% increases of the same price last year, the price of a barrel of crude can sky-rocket at the whim of a single firm, let alone a legitimate issue like Hurricane Ike closing down 6 of 11 refineries on the Gulf Coast!

Rather than taking the money from hard-working American families like yours and mine, let's give them BACK the money (or better yet, don't take it in the first place) that they need for such high-cost necessities like health care, gasoline and education costs rather than take the money FIRST, then give it back in the form of SERVICES that I may or may not need, and could undoubtedly get better somewhere else.

Instead of letting "capitalism" dictate the cost and availability of the single most important factor to our nation's safety and security on a minute-to-minute basis, government regualtion can determine a price LIMIT that changes with the market, but on a calendar schedule rather than a real-time (or imaginary time, as most economic functions are) schedule. In other words, no "panic" can drive the price past the "curb" set by the Feds until the NEXT trading day... exactly like what was in place prior to '01 and is still the norm in EVERY stock exchange on the planet. Our entire society is far too dependant on oil to allow the GLOBAL market to dictate the impact of news and events on OUR supplies and reserves... period.

I'm getting swamped here at work now, and I'm wandering in my train of thought... my point is simply that MORE OIL is a great, short-term solution to the problem for the consumer, and it is a great long-term solution for the States in question (these are revenues that won't end for the next 100 to 200 years!)... but real "energy independence" will only come when the US has a viable, renewable non-petroleum source of energy. There is NO QUESTION that the Feds are NOT going to be the ones to deliver it, but they could provide the means by which it is found and developed.

At least if Mac wins, that is.