[shibal_z]

Obama has had a couple of bad slip ups on energy. One was his mention of ethanol from corn. The only thing propping up the corn ethanol market right now are government subsidies. Once they are removed, corn ethanol becomes a net energy loss due to the poor cellulose yields from corn. A boondoggle from our corporate agricultural friends at ADM. What a fleecing!

I agree with Voodoo on the Strategic Oil Reserves. It's called "strategic" for a reason and using it to lower consumer prices is not what I would call strategic. It's called political pandering much like the gas tax holiday and the so called reigning in of oil speculators that McCain has proposed. It is strikingly ironic and hypocritical to reign in a capitalistic market when the GOP philosophy has always been to leverage the ideals of capitalism to engender free trade and democracy. Straight talker my azz.

As for anyone's energy policy. Obama has a long term plan in place and his vision is to both reduce consumption through increases in average efficiency and by opening up new markets for alternative fuels and derived products. I actually like this plan because it involves huge domestic infrastructure improvements as well as retooling our manufacturing base to create new markets of industry instead of leaving our manufacturing base to atrophy while maintaining the status quo.

My feelings on nuclear energy has been stated already. The issue of nuclear waste containment and disposal is widely known and can be cost prohibitive if anyone really looked into what it would take to properly store such material. This is why Yucca Mountain has been held up for years! No one wants such a site in their state, let alone their backyard.

Furthermore, McCain's plan simply appeases the oil lobby, increases the likelihood of environmental disasters, and ignores the core issues behind the energy crisis that we are in now. For example, our Iraq policy has been instrumental in driving oil prices through the roof while we print money without abandon to pay for it. Everyone likes to point fingers at other things, but the oil lobby paints a picture of high demand and predatory practices by OPEC as the sole reasons on why we need to drill domestically while glossing over the fact that we have printed hundreds of billions of dollars in the last 8 years to pay for this god forsaken war and their historic profits.

Now those billions are coming home to roost!!! Yep, there I said it! The chickens are coming home and guess who's left holding the bill?