Who Is Sarah Palin?

The word on the street is that McCain is picking Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as his Vice Presidential nominee. Wikipedia has a glowing biography, but Project Vote Smart (the first place I usually go to brush up on candidates and politicians) just says this:

Governor Sarah Heath Palin REPEATEDLY REFUSED TO PROVIDE ANY RESPONSES TO CITIZENS ON ISSUES THROUGH THE 2006 NATIONAL POLITICAL AWARENESS TEST WHEN ASKED TO DO SO BY

Key national leaders of both major parties including:
John McCain, Republican Senator
Geraldine Ferraro, Former Democratic Congresswoman
Michael Dukakis, Former Democratic Governor
Bill Frenzel, Former Republican Congressman
Richard Kimball, Project Vote Smart President

Over 100 news organizations throughout the nation also urged their candidates to supply their issue positions through the National Political Awareness Test.

On The Issues is also pretty good, but it doesn't have all that much on Palin either. I suspect that her support for ANWR drilling (which McCain opposes - but we'll see about that) will be a big point in the coming weeks.

Other than that, does anybody know anything more about her positions on the issues? Anything similar to Project Vote Smart or On the Issues out there? All I really know right now is that she's a former beauty pageant runner-up who played high school basketball and made the winning point one time.

UPDATE: This is what McCain says about ANWR now: (1) "ANWR is a pristine place. I don't support drilling there. I just feel that it's an area that, one, it would take years, I think, before you could actually exploit it;" (2) "ANWR is a pristine place and if they found oil in the Grand Canyon, I don’t think I’d drill in the Grand Canyon."

UPDATE II: Looks like she acted as a whistleblower against corruption in Alaska, which is definitely good. Lord knows they need it up there.

UPDATE III: I know that this is going to come up really soon, so I'd just like to point out again that the Department of Energy has recently said that ANWR drilling will only affect the price of gas by $0.02/gallon ($0.75/barrel) in the year 2025. Just saying. Drilling is now the centerpiece of McCain's campaign, and we should be clear up front as to what the costs and benefits really are here.

UPDATE IV: It looks like she's still in Alaska.

UPDATE V: Confirmed.



UPDATE VI: Looks like she might be a creationist.

Asked for her personal views on evolution, Palin said, "I believe we have a creator." She would not say whether her belief also allowed her to accept the theory of evolution as fact. "I'm not going to pretend I know how all this came to be," she said.

UPDATE VII: Here is the Obama campaign's response.

"Today, John McCain put the former mayor of a town of 9,000 with zero foreign policy experience a heartbeat away from the presidency. Governor Palin shares John McCain's commitment to overturning Roe v. Wade, the agenda of Big Oil and continuing George Bush's failed economic policies -- that's not the change we need, it's just more of the same."

UPDATE VIII:


UPDATE IX: On global warming: "“I’m not one though who would attribute it to being man-made." So I guess that this beauty pageant runner-up thinks that she knows more than the world's best biologists and climate scientists.

UPDATE X: I'll be writing more about this later.

Like McCain, Palin believes that oil drilling is the only solution to our energy problems. “I beg to disagree with any candidate who would say we can’t drill our way out of our problem,” she says. She supports more drilling in protected areas of the Outer Continental Shelf and the Alaska Natural Wildlife Refuge, once attacking McCain for his “close-mindedness on ANWR.”

UPDATE XI: As you'd expect, that glowing Wikipedia biography had been doctored. Check out the Wikipedia Scanner tool in the sidebar to look into who changed her page and when.

UPDATE XII: Are you kidding me? McCain only met with Palin once before picking her? That seems like a ridiculously irresponsible move in what should be a very serious election.

UPDATE XIII: Looks like she is now being tested for Project Vote Smart ("Governor Sarah Heath Palin is currently being tested through the 2008 Political Courage Test. "). More on that later.

UPDATE XIV:


UPDATE XV: Her claims about opposing the Bridge to Nowhere are actually false. She starts her campaign off by lying about the infamous Bridge to Nowhere, which she actually strongly supported at the time, and only abandoned after it became a national joke.

UPDATE XVI: Here's video of a Palin debate from 2006, before she became Governor.


UPDATE XVII: Here's video of Palin when she was a local sportscaster (her education is in journalism, in case you were wondering). My favorite part is the caption used to describe the dog race: "LOTS OF DOGS."


UPDATE XVIII: Good god, this is brutal:


UPDATE XIX: "I think God's will has to be done in unifying people and companies to get that gas line built, so pray for that"

UPDATE XX: Jesus Christ. . . .


UPDATE XXI: More on Palin here. Joseph Romm points out some of Palin's energy lies here.

Obama Speech: "The American Promise"

Democratic National Convention

Joe Biden:


Hillary Clinton:


John Kerry:


Bill Clinton:

Eric Alterman on Tom Brokaw on John McCain

I think that Alterman makes a pretty good point here:

Discussing McCain's success in the Republican primaries, Brokaw attributed it to the candidate's "indomitable will," and opined that McCain won by simply being "the most authentic...he wasn't trying to reinvent himself."

This is not only wrong, but diametrically, screamingly wrong. It's not a difficult point — McCain won the primaries specifically by reversing himself on taxes, immigration, the religious right, and virtually every other issue important to the hard right. These policies were not only blazingly visible — Mitt Romney and others called him on it loudly during the Republican debates — but obviously destructive, as the last eight years have proven.

And yet, here is Brokaw saying of the candidate who by far has done the most to change his positions that McCain was "the most authentic...he wasn't trying to reinvent himself."

It's not that hard to see if you're paying attention. But in addition to changing his positions on all of these issues (the estate tax, Roe v. Wade, etc.) McCain also told a lot of lies about Mitt Romney and repeatedly questioned his patriotism. Particularly on the eve of the Florida primaries, which pretty much sealed it for him. To say that McCain won by being "the most authentic...he wasn't trying to reinvent himself" is to seriously rewrite history.

John McCain's Technology Policy

Why I'm Voting For Barack Obama

Energy Policy:

• This is one of the most important issues for me in the 2008 election. As I see it, we need to reach three goals: (1) change our auto fleet so that it is no longer dependent on oil as a fuel source; (2) reduce greenhouse gas emissions from our power plants; and (3) make sure that our energy policy isn't written by industry lobbyists, and that it doesn't ignore informed expert opinions. These are all tough goals to reach, and each will require a future President to be both honest and aggressive.
  
• Dependence on Oil: With respect to the first goal (which is long-term), Obama simply has a better plan. Obama will increase fuel efficiency standards by 4% every year. This is a very important step, and is really integral to reducing our dependence on oil. McCain, on the other hand, only promises to enforce existing fuel economy standards. In fact, he has actively opposed increasing fuel economy standards in the past (in 2003 and 2005). This is simply bad policy. Without updating our fuel economy standards, we'll continue to be the world's largest consumer of oil. McCain's hands-off approach means more fuel-inefficient cars, and more oil consumption for the foreseeable future. This approach simply hasn't worked for the past 20 years. If we keep this hands-off approach up, we'll only get hit harder by future price shocks.
  
  In addition to fuel economy, Obama also supports Amtrak funding and increased public transportation. McCain does not. In fact, he has actively opposed increased public transportation funding, and has attempted for years to dissolve Amtrak.
  
  Both candidates propose tax credits for the purchase of efficient vehicles, but Obama's proposal is better (it's $2,000 more than McCain's, and not as restrictive in where it applies). This is important, because the best end-result we could hope for is plug-in electric vehicles that cost less than traditional gas-powered vehicles. Tax credits are important because they encourage both investment and future purchases.
  
  McCain gets some points for his "$300 Million Prize To Improve Battery Technology For Full Commercial Development Of Plug-In Hybrid And Fully Electric Automobiles," but Obama still has better investments to promote similar technologies and make electric cars commercially available.
  
  In addition to falling short on these important issues, McCain has made a big lie the centerpiece of his energy plan. McCain has repeatedly told the public that drilling in the protected OCS areas would lead to consumers "pay[ing] less" at the pump. It wouldn't, and McCain is lying when he says that it would. In reality, the Department of Energy estimates that OCS drilling in the protected areas would only result in an additional 200,000 barrels of oil per day at peak production (in the year 2030, by their estimates). This, they say, would have an "insignificant" impact on the price of gas. Even the National Petroleum Council (which exists "to represent the views of the oil and natural gas industries") only argues (unrealistically) that we would see an extra 900,000 barrels of oil per day at peak production in the year 2025. When you compare that to a world market that currently consumes 86 million barrels of oil per day today (and will consume much more in 2025 and 2030), that works out - at best - to a savings of pennies per gallon. "Insignificant" is the right word. Yet McCain has consistently pretended that he has the power to reduce the price of gas by tapping these "insignificant" resources. If he wants to argue that this will reduce our trade deficit, that's one thing (though not the most compelling argument). But to lie about its effect on the price of gas is ridiculous.
  
  McCain and his lobbyist advisers have also repeatedly lied about the environmental risks of increased OCS drilling in the protected regions, telling us that "not even Hurricanes Katrina and Rita could cause significant spillage." In reality, they did. 124 offshore spills, resulting in 734,000 gallons of oil, to be specific.
  
  McCain also loses points for his ridiculous "gas tax holiday" proposal (which would starve public transportation of funding and increase our dependence on oil).
  
  Finally, McCain constantly touts nuclear power as something that will lead to a "reduction in our dependence on foreign oil." The problem here is that only 3% of our electricity here in the United States comes from oil. Our dependence upon oil comes pretty much entirely from our auto fleet (as well as from home heating). Yet McCain opposes increases in fuel efficiency standards, and his official spokesman George Allen has already said that "John McCain does not wish to mandate any particular building standards for energy efficient homes or buildings." So unless McCain is proposing nuclear powered cars (he's not), he's simply not being honest about our country's oil use.
  

• Greenhouse Gas Emissions: With respect to the second goal, both candidates have cap-and-trade policies. However, both are not equal under this category. What I find most telling are the added subsidies and incentives proposed by both candidates. Even though McCain constantly touts himself as the candidate of renewable energy, he has explicitly come out against subsidies and benefits for renewables. Yet he feels perfectly comfortable proposing $2 billion in taxpayer subsidies every year to the coal industry. I don't know how McCain expects wind and solar energy to take over a significant portion of the energy market when he keeps on subsidizing their competition and giving them nothing. Did I mention that McCain's campaign team is packed with energy industry lobbyists?
  
  In addition to poorly allocating government subsidies, McCain has missed key votes that would have extended crucial tax credits to wind and solar energy. He preferred to grandstand over his "drill now, pay less" lies. This is an important point point to keep in mind, because those tax credits were really needed by the wind and solar industry.
  
  But it's not just that McCain was negligent in missing these votes. He has actively opposed tax credits for renewable energy in the past. In 2004, he introduced an amendment that would have eliminated the tax credit entirely. In 2006, he voted against the extension of the tax credits. After that, he just stopped showing up. McCain missed key votes on the tax credits in March 2007, June 2007, December 2007 (this one failed by a single vote), and February 2008 (this one also failed by a single vote). Despite all this, McCain has the nerve to say "I have a long record of that support of alternate energy. … I’ve always been for all of those and I have not missed any crucial vote." This is quite simply a bald-faced lie. There is no kind way of putting this. What McCain said is 100% untrue.
  
  McCain has also opposed renewable energy portfolios at every turn.
  
  Obama, on the other hand, supports tax credits for renewable energy. He also proposes renewable energy portfolios so that we get 10% of our electricity from renewables by 2012 and 25% by 2025. I'm not too happy about Obama's similar support for "clean coal" technology, but it's still far better than McCain's plan.
  
• Industry Lobbyists: Despite McCain's bald-faced lies that "I’m the only one the special interests don’t give any money to," he has received plenty in contributions from them. Yet, even more important than that, his entire team is run by industry lobbyists. Twenty-two of his advisers and fundraisers have lobbied on behalf of oil companies. Most notably, McCain's senior political adviser Charlie Black has lobbied for Occidental Petroleum, among others. His adviser Nancy Pfotenhauer was the top lobbyist for Koch Industries (which has been responsible for 300 oil spills alone) for years. These are the people who have McCain's ear. These are the people who filter all of McCain's information before he hears it. These are people who have a vested interest in promoting industry-friendly positions to McCain, and these are the people who are crafting McCain's policies and talking points. The fact that he is completely surrounded by them should be troubling to voters who are looking for impartial positions that work in favor of the public interest. Hell, until recently, Charlie Black was conducting his lobbying activities on board the Straight-Talk Express itself (seriously - you can't make this stuff up).

General Intelligence:

• The next President will be making some very important decisions, managing one of the largest organization on the planet, and dealing with some very complex issues. Therefore (obviously), he must be a very, very smart person. He has to be able to think on his toes and quickly come to understand the problems (and potential solutions) at hand.
  
• When it comes to general intelligence, Obama certainly has the credentials. Obama studied at Columbia and Harvard on scholarship, even becoming President of the Harvard Law Review (which is one of the highest academic achievements a young lawyer could hope to reach). Afterwards, Obama taught Constitutional Law (something important for a future President to know) at one of the nation's top law schools. These are things that you can't accomplish unless you are really, really smart.
  
  During interviews, as well, you'll notice that Obama is very thoughtful and careful to address the questions actually being asked. Even questions with multiple parts. Rather than mindlessly repeating the campaign's talking-points, he listens, understands, and responds. This isn't the most remarkable feat in the world (everyone should be capable of understanding and addressing basic questions), but Obama's basic communication skills just make McCain's bloopers and blunders look all the worse in comparison.
  
• When it comes to general intelligence, McCain looks really bad on paper. McCain graduated fifth from the bottom of his class (894/899) at the Naval Academy, and holds no other degrees.
  
  During debates and interviews, McCain consistently looks like a fool. Whether he is dodging questions, misunderstanding issues, or mindlessly falling back on talking points, McCain has an uncanny ability to make me cringe. Just look at these clips:
  
  
  
  
  
  
  McCain didn't make it into politics based on his big ideas or intellectual credentials. He made it there based on his compelling personal story.
  

Ultimate Fighting

• I happen to be a fan of Ultimate Fighting. Therefore, I don't like the fact that McCain, a lifelong boxing fan, has made it his personal crusade to shut down the sport.
  
• From Slate:
  

  "When I tell people I'm an ultimate fighting fan, they invariably respond: "Don't people get killed all the time doing that?" But no one has ever been killed at the UFC--though boxers are killed every year. No one has even been seriously injured at the UFC. On the rare occasions when a bout has ended with a bloody knockout, the loser has always walked out of the ring.

  But this does not impress boxing fans, who are the most vigorous opponents of extreme fighting. McCain sat ringside at a boxing match where a fighter was killed. When I asked him to explain the moral distinction between boxing and ultimate fighting, he exploded at me, "If you can't see the moral distinction, then we have nothing to talk about!" Then he cut our interview short and stormed out of his office."

• As far as I know, Obama isn't in the business of shutting down UFC.
  

John McCain on the Economy

More McCain Campaign Lies

Is anybody else getting sick of things like this, and the lack of media attention?

Obama-Biden '08

Sen. Obama has chosen Sen. Biden (D-DE) as his 2008 running-mate. Here is a list of Biden's positions on the big issues, and here is a Grist write-up on his positions on energy and environment.

UPDATE: Maybe we'll see more of this:


UPDATE II: Here is Biden's Senate page.

UPDATE III: Here is Obama's introduction and Biden's speech.


UPDATE IV: Here is a Biden interview with Charlie Rose from last year.


UPDATE V: I don't like this. I hope that Obama doesn't let Biden screw up his technology policy proposals.

Obama Nation Abomination

Unfit for Publication

Latest Poll Reveals 430 New Demographics That Will Decide Election

Latest Poll Reveals 430 New Demographics That Will Decide Election

Who is out of touch?

For the past few weeks, millionaire John McCain has been trolling about the country, running campaign ads portraying Obama as some sort of pampered celebrity who is out of touch and incapable of relating to everyday folk. This is the same McCain who comes from one of the wealthiest families in Arizona, who left his first wife to marry a millionaire heiress, who owns multiple homes, who paid $500 for a pair of shoes, who appeared on the show 24, who has hosted Saturday Night Live, and who has appeared in the movie Wedding Crashers. The man who graduated fifth from the bottom of his class, and who made it into the Senate propelled by his fame, is criticizing the son of a goat herder and a single mother, who used to live on food stamps, and who went to Harvard on scholarship. According to McCain, Obama is a wealthy elitist celebrity

Well, this absurd line of argument has finally come back to bite McCain. In a recent interview with Politico, McCain was asked how many houses he owns. This was the (now infamous) response:

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said in an interview Wednesday that he was uncertain how many houses he and his wife, Cindy, own.

"I think — I'll have my staff get to you," McCain told Politico in Las Cruces, N.M.

The correct answer, it turns out, is seveneight. The man who was criticizing the son of a goat herder for out-of-touch elitism can't even keep track of how many houses he owns. On top of that, McCain has a $273,000 budget for household staff and can't remember what kind of car he drives (the correct answer is Cadillac CTS).

This is really a beautiful moment. The Obama campaign hasn't missed out on it, either. They recently ran these two ads:




In perspective, this new McCain ad looks really, really weak.


In light of McCain's recent statements, these ads will finally be recognized as being absurdly backwards.

Graph: Obama, McCain, and Taxes

Why I'm Voting For Barack Obama

Energy Policy:

• This is one of the most important issues for me in the 2008 election. As I see it, we need to reach three goals: (1) change our auto fleet so that it is no longer dependent on oil as a fuel source; (2) reduce greenhouse gas emissions from our power plants; and (3) make sure that our energy policy isn't written by industry lobbyists, and that it doesn't ignore informed expert opinions. These are all tough goals to reach, and each will require a future President to be both honest and aggressive.
  
• Dependence on Oil: With respect to the first goal (which is long-term), Obama simply has a better plan. Obama will increase fuel efficiency standards by 4% every year. This is a very important step, and is really integral to reducing our dependence on oil. McCain, on the other hand, only promises to enforce existing fuel economy standards. In fact, he has actively opposed increasing fuel economy standards in the past (in 2003 and 2005). This is simply bad policy. Without updating our fuel economy standards, we'll continue to be the world's largest consumer of oil. McCain's hands-off approach means more fuel-inefficient cars, and more oil consumption for the foreseeable future. This approach simply hasn't worked for the past 20 years. If we keep this hands-off approach up, we'll only get hit harder by future price shocks.
  
  In addition to fuel economy, Obama also supports Amtrak funding and increased public transportation. McCain does not. In fact, he has actively opposed increased public transportation funding, and has attempted for years to dissolve Amtrak.
  
  Both candidates propose tax credits for the purchase of efficient vehicles, but Obama's proposal is better (it's $2,000 more than McCain's, and not as restrictive in where it applies). This is important, because the best end-result we could hope for is plug-in electric vehicles that cost less than traditional gas-powered vehicles. Tax credits are important because they encourage both investment and future purchases.
  
  McCain gets some points for his "$300 Million Prize To Improve Battery Technology For Full Commercial Development Of Plug-In Hybrid And Fully Electric Automobiles," but Obama still has better investments to promote similar technologies and make electric cars commercially available.
  
  In addition to falling short on these important issues, McCain has made a big lie the centerpiece of his energy plan. McCain has repeatedly told the public that drilling in the protected OCS areas would lead to consumers "pay[ing] less" at the pump. It wouldn't, and McCain is lying when he says that it would. In reality, the Department of Energy estimates that OCS drilling in the protected areas would only result in an additional 200,000 barrels of oil per day at peak production (in the year 2030, by their estimates). This, they say, would have an "insignificant" impact on the price of gas. Even the National Petroleum Council (which exists "to represent the views of the oil and natural gas industries") only argues (unrealistically) that we would see an extra 900,000 barrels of oil per day at peak production in the year 2025. When you compare that to a world market that currently consumes 86 million barrels of oil per day today (and will consume much more in 2025 and 2030), that works out - at best - to a savings of pennies per gallon. "Insignificant" is the right word. Yet McCain has consistently pretended that he has the power to reduce the price of gas by tapping these "insignificant" resources. If he wants to argue that this will reduce our trade deficit, that's one thing (though not the most compelling argument). But to lie about its effect on the price of gas is ridiculous.
  
  McCain and his lobbyist advisers have also repeatedly lied about the environmental risks of increased OCS drilling in the protected regions, telling us that "not even Hurricanes Katrina and Rita could cause significant spillage." In reality, they did. 124 offshore spills, resulting in 734,000 gallons of oil, to be specific.
  
  McCain also loses points for his ridiculous "gas tax holiday" proposal (which would starve public transportation of funding and increase our dependence on oil).
  
  Finally, McCain constantly touts nuclear power as something that will lead to a "reduction in our dependence on foreign oil." The problem here is that only 3% of our electricity here in the United States comes from oil. Our dependence upon oil comes pretty much entirely from our auto fleet (as well as from home heating). Yet McCain opposes increases in fuel efficiency standards, and his official spokesman George Allen has already said that "John McCain does not wish to mandate any particular building standards for energy efficient homes or buildings." So unless McCain is proposing nuclear powered cars (he's not), he's simply not being honest about our country's oil use.
  

• Greenhouse Gas Emissions: With respect to the second goal, both candidates have cap-and-trade policies. However, both are not equal under this category. What I find most telling are the added subsidies and incentives proposed by both candidates. Even though McCain constantly touts himself as the candidate of renewable energy, he has explicitly come out against subsidies and benefits for renewables. Yet he feels perfectly comfortable proposing $2 billion in taxpayer subsidies every year to the coal industry. I don't know how McCain expects wind and solar energy to take over a significant portion of the energy market when he keeps on subsidizing their competition and giving them nothing. Did I mention that McCain's campaign team is packed with energy industry lobbyists?
  
  In addition to poorly allocating government subsidies, McCain has missed key votes that would have extended crucial tax credits to wind and solar energy. He preferred to grandstand over his "drill now, pay less" lies. This is an important point point to keep in mind, because those tax credits were really needed by the wind and solar industry.
  
  But it's not just that McCain was negligent in missing these votes. He has actively opposed tax credits for renewable energy in the past. In 2004, he introduced an amendment that would have eliminated the tax credit entirely. In 2006, he voted against the extension of the tax credits. After that, he just stopped showing up. McCain missed key votes on the tax credits in March 2007, June 2007, December 2007 (this one failed by a single vote), and February 2008 (this one also failed by a single vote). Despite all this, McCain has the nerve to say "I have a long record of that support of alternate energy. … I’ve always been for all of those and I have not missed any crucial vote." This is quite simply a bald-faced lie. There is no kind way of putting this. What McCain said is 100% untrue.
  
  McCain has also opposed renewable energy portfolios at every turn.
  
  Obama, on the other hand, supports tax credits for renewable energy. He also proposes renewable energy portfolios so that we get 10% of our electricity from renewables by 2012 and 25% by 2025. I'm not too happy about Obama's similar support for "clean coal" technology, but it's still far better than McCain's plan.
  
• Industry Lobbyists: Despite McCain's bald-faced lies that "I’m the only one the special interests don’t give any money to," he has received plenty in contributions from them. Yet, even more important than that, his entire team is run by industry lobbyists. Twenty-two of his advisers and fundraisers have lobbied on behalf of oil companies. Most notably, McCain's senior political adviser Charlie Black has lobbied for Occidental Petroleum, among others. His adviser Nancy Pfotenhauer was the top lobbyist for Koch Industries (which has been responsible for 300 oil spills alone) for years. These are the people who have McCain's ear. These are the people who filter all of McCain's information before he hears it. These are people who have a vested interest in promoting industry-friendly positions to McCain, and these are the people who are crafting McCain's policies and talking points. The fact that he is completely surrounded by them should be troubling to voters who are looking for impartial positions that work in favor of the public interest. Hell, until recently, Charlie Black was conducting his lobbying activities on board the Straight-Talk Express itself (seriously - you can't make this stuff up).
  

[I'll be updating and adding to this list as election day approaches]

Obama Ad: "Never"

This home-state newspaper article about McCain from 1989 is also worth a read.

McCain Lies About the Price of Gas Again

In another cruel and cynical ploy to dupe voters into thinking he can bring down the price of gas, McCain said this aboard a Chevron oil rig:

McCain traveled 130 miles by helicopter to tour the massive facility, which produces 10,000 barrels of oil each day. He criticized his Democratic rival, Barack Obama, for not supporting such a plan.

"He says it won't solve our problem and that it's, quote, not real. He's wrong and the American people know it," McCain told reporters.

Obama's campaign, meanwhile, called the four-hour excursion nothing more than a stunt. Obama supporter and former Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack compared McCain's position to the "Beverly Hillbillies" television program where the main character — Jed Clampett — stumbles onto an oil gusher. McCain, he said, has "a Jed Clampett energy policy."

McCain and his aides believe the pocketbook approach can connect with voters.

"Americans across our country are hurting, as we all know, because of the cost of energy," McCain said aboard the rig. "Gas prices are through the roof. Energy costs have seeped into our grocery bills, making it more expensive to feed our families. Now as we prepare for the winter, it's time for us to be more serious about our home heating oil needs. ... And that means we need to start drilling offshore, at advanced oil rigs like this one."

I like the Jed Clampett line. It's also worth pointing out that McCain's original plan to visit the oil rig had coincided with a major oil spill. Seriously. You can't make this stuff up.

In reality, McCain is way off the mark. The Department of Energy says that at peak production (which they project to occur around the year 2030), we'd only see an extra 220,000 barrels of oil per day from opening up the protected OCS areas. According to the DoE, this would have an "insignificant" impact on the price of gas. Even the way more optimistic (and unrealistic) projections from the National Petroleum Council (which exists "to represent the views of the oil and natural gas industries") only see an extra 990,000 barrels of oil per day in the year 2025. Compare that to the world market, which already consumes 86 million barrels of oil per day today, and you see that this will not have any real effect on the price of gas. At best, pennies per gallon.

As I've explained earlier, both of these estimates should really be cut in half, since half of the protected OCS region is off the coast of California, and they're pretty solidly against opening up these areas for drilling.

OPEC controls 2/3 of the world's oil reserves. They can manipulate the globally-set price-per-barrel. We control 3% of the world's oil reserves. We cannot manipulate the globally-set price-per-barrel. McCain is simply wrong, and it's crazy to see so many people jumping on the fantasy bandwagon with him.

Oil and Coal PR

I've noticed a lot of PR coming from the oil and coal industries lately. Whether it's television advertisements or their sponsorship of the CNN debates (seriously), they've been putting a lot of money behind their effort to shape public opinion. In fact, Public Campaign Action Fund looked into this, and found "that the coal and oil industries spent an astounding $427.2 million over the first six months of 2008 to influence public opinion and public policy" (pdf). That works out to more than $2 million every day.

Obama Campaign Responds to McCain Campaign's Lies

I really like these online responses. This one responds to a McCain campaign ad about taxes.


This one responds to yet another McCain campaign ad about taxes.

Annenberg Political Fact Check also calls out the McCain campaign for its "multiple false and misleading claims about Obama's tax proposals."

Cable News and Politics

Pew has conducted a new survey of the political leanings of cable news viewers:

CNN: 51% Democrats, 18% Republicans, 23% independents

MSNBC: 45% Democrats, 18% Republicans, 27% independents

Fox News: 33% Democrats, 39% Republicans, 22% independents

I'm actually a little surprised to see so many Democratic and Independent viewers at FOX.

Straight Talk - Part VIII

John McCain (R-AZ), the most absent Senator this session, recently said this at the Aspen Institute:

McCAIN: I have a long record of that support of alternate energy. … I’ve always been for all of those and I have not missed any crucial vote. But my citizens in Arizona know that when I’m running for the President of the United States I have to be out campaigning.

Here is the video:


This claim is simply untrue. As the Center for American Progress points out:

McCain’s has actually missed several “crucial” energy votes. In July alone, he missed every single energy vote brought to the floor. This session, McCain has skipped votes supporting renewable energy tax credits four times, all of which were filibustered. In June, for example, McCain missed a vote on the landmark Lieberman-Warner climate change legislation.

McCain has also been the “crucial” absent vote on key legislation. In December, legislation stripping tax break giveaways to Big Oil and investing in cleaner sources failed by one vote, 59-40 (Vote #425); McCain missed that vote to campaign. In February, McCain skipped a vote on extending tax credits to renewables, which also failed by one vote (Vote #8). Both times, McCain was the only senator absent.

“It’s interesting to hear Sen. McCain talk about bringing Congress back” for a vote on offshore drilling, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) said this week. “He wasn’t even in Congress when we had two very important bills on energy.”

As far as him being "for all of those" alternate forms of energy, it's worth pointing out that McCain is willing to heavily subsidize coal and nuclear, but not renewables. When asked by Grist Magazine, he said this:

Grist: What’s your position on subsidies for green technologies like wind and solar?

McCain: I’m not one who believes that we need to subsidize things. The wind industry is doing fine, the solar industry is doing fine.

Yet he calls for $2 billion in taxpayer money every year to subsidize the coal industry, and calls for 45 new nuclear plants by 2030 (which will necessarily require heavy taxpayer subsidies to the nuclear industry).

Part I: "I'm the only one the special interests don't give money to." False.
Part II: "Every time in history we have raised taxes it has cut revenues." False.
Part III: "Romney provided taxpayer-funded abortions." Highly misleading.
Part IV: "Iran[] taking Al Qaeda into Iran, training them and sending them back." Unsupported.
Part V: "We have drawn down to pre-surge levels" False.
Part VI: "Saddam Hussein is on a crash course to construct a nuclear weapon." False.
Part VII: "Not even Hurricanes Katrina and Rita could cause significant spillage." False.

Deroy Murdoch on OCS Drilling

Deroy Murdoch recently wrote an editorial in the New York Post about offshore drilling titled "DEMS' OSTRICH APPROACH ON OIL." The basic thrust of his argument is that we really have no idea how much oil is under the protected OCS region, and that Obama has actively tried to cover up any exploration that would have shed some light on the issue.

Starting with his claims of cover-up, Murdoch says:

Obama's "Oil SENSE Act" would repeal the 2005 Energy Policy Act's authorization of these inventories. S.115 would leave decision makers with Carter administration maps drawn with pre-PC technology. This is like engineering a Space Shuttle mission with slide rules. Obama's bill would prohibit expanded use of 3-D seismic techniques that locate and measure underwater oil deposits.

...

Obama's Don't Ask, Don't Drill policy spurns these marvels and embraces outdated information gathered with obsolete instruments. This is the audacity of ignorance.

Democrats like Obama prefer not to know what riches rest off America's coasts. They resemble kindergartners who cover their ears and hum loudly to muffle their parents' unwelcome words.

However, Murdoch is being disingenuous about what the Oil SENSE Act involved. It didn't repeal the "authorization of these inventories." It repealed the taxpayer subsidization of private oil and gas exploration for the entire outer-continental region - including those that are already open to leasing (4/5 of the OCS region is already open to leasing, by the way; only 1/5 is covered by the moratorium). Since this would be a taxpayer-subsidized windfall for the companies that already owned the leases to these lands, the Oil SENSE Act sought to repeal that provision.

Furthermore, Murdoch failed to mention that this was done at the request of the President himself: "The President believes that additional taxpayer subsidies for oil-and-gas exploration are unwarranted in today's price environment, and urges the Senate to eliminate the Federal oil-and-gas subsidies and other exploration incentives contained in the bill."

So when Murdoch says that Obama "spurns" and "prohibits" exploration technology, he's not quite being honest. What the bill does is stop taxpayers from footing the bill for oil companies at a time when they're already making record profits. Let them invest in their own explorations.

However, Murdoch's larger point is that the government estimates of the oil in the OCS protected region are outdated and probably inaccurate. According to Murdoch, "Democrats like Obama prefer not to know what riches rest off America's coasts."

This is a better argument than the typical "drilling will reduce the price at the pump" line. At least Murdoch concedes that he has no idea how much oil is off the coast (even though he describes it as "riches"), and that the best estimates we have predict that it's too small to really bother with (okay, he doesn't quite concede that, but it's obviously the argument that he's wrestling with).

According to Murdoch:

In 2005, Congress mandated new, quintennial inventories, then gave Interior six months and $0 to assess how much oil and natural gas undergird the 1.76 billion-acre Outer Continental Shelf - a laughably impossible task.

"They couldn't even board a research vessel," explains a congressional staffer who studies these issues. Interior's "paper inventory," the aide adds, "examined Canadian and West African coastal data, imagined where those sediments pooled before the Continental Drift, then extrapolated to guesstimate what's off our Atlantic coast today."

The resulting document states: "Resource estimates are highly dependent on the current knowledge base, which has not been updated in 20 to 40 years for areas under congressional moratorium." Translation: "We have no idea what's really out there."

Regarding the methodology, this is what the 2005 Congressional mandate actually said:

(a) In general
The Secretary shall conduct an inventory and analysis of oil and natural gas resources beneath all of the waters of the United States Outer Continental Shelf (“OCS”). The inventory and analysis shall—
(1) use available data on oil and gas resources in areas offshore of Mexico and Canada that will provide information on trends of oil and gas accumulation in areas of the OCS;
(2) use any available technology, except drilling, but including 3–D seismic technology to obtain accurate resource estimates. . . . (42 U.S.C. 15912)

Just paragraphs earlier, Murdoch had praised 3-D seismic technology as a modern "marvel." Now he says that measuring oil with this technology is "a laughably impossible task." It's really bizarre.

Regarding the anonymous Congressional staffer "who studies these issues" (i.e., the Congressional staffer who wasn't actually involved in any of this directly), it appears that they actually could board a research vessel. The only statutory restriction regards actual drilling. Other than that, the statute explicitly says that they could use "any available technology." This nameless staffer sneers at what papers are examined as pre-existing data, yet fails to mention that the statute authorized the "use [of] any available technology" to obtain resource estimates.

Murdoch makes a good point in highlighting the uncertainty here, though. It could be that the MMS projections are too conservative. However, I'd prefer to base policy decisions on what we actually know, rather than on what we hope to be the case. Furthermore, I'd hesitate to completely shut down Congress based on a wish and a prayer about what you hope to maybe someday find underground.

Finally, I'd just like to point out that our current best estimates say that we'd see, at peak, an extra 200,000 barrels of oil per day from drilling in the protected OCS regions. That would go onto a world market that currently consumes about 86 million barrels of oil per day, and will only consume more as China and India increase demand. According to the Department of Energy, this would have an "insignificant" impact on the price of oil. Even if there were several times as much oil there as our estimates say, it would only affect the price of gas by pennies. And even if we found some giant, gaping mega-wells that pumped several million barrels of oil per day, we'd still be just as vulnerable to price-shocks, since the price of oil is set on the world market. OPEC still controls about 2/3 of the world's oil reserves, and they can manipulate the price of oil far more effectively than we can, even with our imaginary oil supplies.

UPDATE: Even under the most wildly optimistic and unrealistic scenario proposed by the National Petroleum Council (which exists "to represent the views of the oil and natural gas industries"), we'd only see another 990,000 barrels of oil per day in the year 2025. Compare that to the world market, which currently consumes about 86 million barrels of oil per day, and you're still not seeing any real impact on the price of gas.

How the Issue of OCS Drilling is Covered by MSNBC

As I have repeatedly pointed out, and as the Department of Energy itself has said, drilling on the protected areas of the OCS would have an "insignificant" impact on the globally-set price of oil, and drilling in ANWR would save only two cents per gallon ($0.75/barrel) a generation from now. Yet John McCain (R-AZ) has put this issue front-and-center, and the awful "journalists" at CNN, MSNBC and FOX News have been all too happy to make this the central issue of the very real and very serious energy policy questions we face today.

During last week's Race for the White House on MSNBC (an awful show that always talks campaign strategy and hardly ever talks actual substance), Rachel Madow pointed out that OCS drilling in the protected region "would really have no impact on gas prices for . . . a generation," and that it was silly (or "brilliant politics" with "no basis in reality," as she put it) for this to be a central issue of the campaign. She failed to add that the "impact" we see in a generation would be "insignificant," as the Department of Energy put it.

However, rather than talk about the reality of the issue and Madow's central point (a good one), host David Gregory and his panel ratcheted up the stupidity, feebly talking about "flip-flopping" and letting this exchange fly:

HARWOOD (continuing directly from Maddow, above): David, let’s not forget, if we’re talking about a flip-flop, John McCain flip-flopped on this same issue. He just did it before Barack Obama did.

MADDOW: Yes.

GREGORY: Pat, final comment.

BUCHANAN: David, I’ve got to step in here because Rachel has really finally nailed one cold. Look, we’ve got $4 a gallon gasoline, $150 a barrel oil, and the Republicans are blaming Barack Obama for it, and they are succeeding with the issue and forcing him to change. That is a winner. Astonishingly good politics, a rarity for the Republicans lately.

GREGORY: Yes. All right. We’re going to take a break here. Coming up, Paris Hilton’s mom is chastising John McCain for his new attack ad featuring her daughter. Plus, what McCain’s 96-year-old mother has to say about that celeb video.

The transition here really sums it up. No wonder the press only has a 10% approval rating.

This is quite simply a lie, which McCain and the GOP has repeated over and over again. Yet all our journalists can do is praise it as "brilliant" and "astonishingly good politics." Where is the outrage? How out of touch are these people?

Princeton Economist Paul Krugman framed the issue much better in his August 8, 2008 column in the New York Times:

KRUGMAN (8/8/08): So the G.O.P. has found its issue for the 2008 election. For the next three months the party plans to keep chanting: “Drill here! Drill now! Drill here! Drill now! Four legs good, two legs bad!” O.K., I added that last part.

And the debate on energy policy has helped me find the words for something I’ve been thinking about for a while. Republicans, once hailed as the “party of ideas,” have become the party of stupid.

Sometimes the two parties have honest disagreements about policy matters. But in this case (over-generalizations aside), you have to call a spade a spade. It is absolutely dishonest, and it's only "good politics" as long as people like David Gregory let them get away with it.

UPDATE: Here is another clip from MSNBC. In it, Frank Donatelli continuously calls for more offshore drilling in the protected OCS areas (as if it would reduce the price of gas or reduce our dependence on foreign oil). Andrea Mitchell, unfortunately, never goes directly after the premise of his argument. Once again, a GOP politician has gotten away with spreading misleading talking points on this issue.


Frank Donatelli, by the way, also lobbied on behalf of Exxon.

Exploring Realities Of Offshore Oil Drilling

Robert Kauffman, director of the Center for Energy and Environmental Studies at Boston University, talks about the realities of offshore oil drilling at Science Friday on NPR.

The McCain Campaign Lies About Offshore Drilling Again

During Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, the offshore drilling drilling rigs we have in the Gulf of Mexico were severely damaged. In the end, these two hurricanes caused a total of 124 offshore oil spills, resulting in 743,700 gallons of spilt oil. Six of those spills were 42,000 gallons or greater.

And it's not just offshore spills. Louisiana and the Gulf Coast were hit hard by 595 onshore oil spills as well, causing approximately 9 million gallons of spilt oil. Particularly, the Bass Enterprise Cox Bay spill resulted in 3.78 million gallons of spilt oil, and the Murphy Oil spill resulted in 819,000 gallons of spilt oil (contaminating 1,700 homes and a local high school).

Koch Industries knows of the dangers of oil spills. In fact, the E.P.A. says that they have been responsible for 300 oil spills themselves. They have faced record fines for their environmentally careless practices. That is precisely why they decided to employ Nancy Pfotenhauer as their top lobbyist.

These days, however, Nancy Pfotenhauer has gone on to work for the John McCain (R-AZ) campaign. While there, she has said ridiculously untrue things, such as this:

When Senator McCain opposed lifting the ban in the past, it was because there were concerns about environmental capability. Like, could we do this and still maintain a pristine environmental um uh climate and and area around the drilling? And basically, what we’ve seen is the technology has progressed to the point where we could do that. We withstood Hurricanes Rita and Katrina and didn’t spill a drop.

This is quite simply a bald-faced lie. There is no other way of putting it.

But it's not just Nancy Pfotenhauer. John McCain has repeated this same lie.

"As for offshore drilling, it’s safe enough these days that not even Hurricanes Katrina and Rita could cause significant spillage from the battered rigs off the coasts of New Orleans and Houston."

Once again, it appears that McCain himself is lying.

Nor has Nancy Pfotenhauer stopped telling this lie, even after she had been called out on it in-person by David Shuster at MSNBC. This is what she recently had to say about the topic:

"And then there was a concern in the past about the technology. Did the technology exist, was it refined enough if you will, no pun intended, to be able to protect environmentally sensitive areas. And so — he’s been a conservationist all his life — he was concerned about that. And I think the things that have happened since then . . . [W]hen we survived Hurricane Katrina and Rita with no significant spills, I think that had a very powerful impact on his feeling about the technology."

Notice how she is careful to use the subjective word "significant" this time. That's pretty much the definition of "spin" (and some incredibly ridiculous spinning at that), and it's really laughable that McCain continues to walk around the country calling himself a straight-talker.

UPDATE: Here is a photo montage

UPDATE II: Rather than honestly discussing this issue, it appears that McCain has resolved to use television advertisements to paint Obama as some sort of wealthy elitist celebrity. This is the same McCain who comes from one of the wealthiest families in Arizona, who left his first wife to marry a millionaire heiress, who owns multiple homes, who paid $500 for a pair of shoes, who appeared on the show 24, who has hosted Saturday Night Live, and who has appeared in the movie Wedding Crashers. The man who graduated fifth from the bottom of his class, and who made it into the Senate propelled by his fame, is criticizing the son of a goat herder and a single mother, who used to live on food stamps, and who went to Harvard on scholarship. According to McCain, Obama is a wealthy elitist celebrity, and Hurricanes Katrina and Rita caused no "significant" spillage.

Obama Ad: "The Low Road"

Obama: "It's like these guys take pride in being ignorant"

Joseph Romm on Energy Policy

John McCain: Childish and Dishonest

The country is currently $9 trillion in debt. 47 million people lack basic health care insurance. We're fighting wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. We're dependent on oil for our transportation, and at the mercy of changes in the globally-set price per barrel. The ideological balance of the Supreme Court could radically change direction in the next four years, depending on who replaces the next Justice to step aside. American tax policies will come up for debate and revision in the year 2010.

So now we have a Presidential election, where we're supposed to decide who is best equipped to handle these problems. In a well-functioning democracy, both candidates should be explaining these problems to the American voters, and explaining why their solutions would make things better (or how their opponent's solutions would make things worse).

So what does John McCain do with his national platform? He does this:


That's right. McCain just photoshopped Obama's face onto a woman's body.

But it's not just that. He's also put out advertisements like this one, trying to breed resentment in the Spanish-speaking community for not mentioning Latin American countries in his Germany speech:


Most famously, McCain also put out an ad comparing Obama to Paris Hilton and Britney Spears:


You'll notice that in the last ad (the Britney one), McCain finally at least mentions some policy concerns. However, even this is filled with falsehood and stupidity. According to the non-partisan Annenberg Political Fact Check:

McCain's new ad claims that Obama "says he'll raise taxes on electricity."
That's false. Obama says no such thing.

As I've previously written, the offshore drilling argument is bogus as well. If we were to open the outer-continental shelf to drilling leases, it would only result in about 200,000 barrels of oil per day going onto a world market that currently consumes approximately 85 million barrels per day. And not even that would happen until peak production (which the Department of Energy estimates as sometime around the year 2030). That amounts to a savings of pennies per gallon that is decades into the future.

The offshore drilling argument plays off of two easily-made misunderstandings. The first is that the oil drilled here would stay here. It wouldn't. That oil would not belong to the United States - it would belong to Exxon or Shell or Unocal, and they would sell it onto the world market. The oil would not be "ours" (unless McCain intends on nationalizing our oil supplies like Venezuela - which I'm certain he doesn't) and it would not make "us" energy independent. McCain's ad implies that offshore drilling would lead to independence from foreign oil. It most certainly would not, and McCain is simply lying by saying that it would.

The second major misunderstanding is that the oil recovered from the outer-continental shelf would result in lower gas prices. McCain himself straight-out lied when he said this: "Lifting that ban could seriously lower the price of oil — and Congress should get it done immediately. We need to drill more, drill now, and pay less at the pump."

McCain is 100% wrong on this. According to the Department of Energy, drilling on the outer-continental shelf would only result in about 200,000 extra barrels of oil per day at peak production somewhere around the year 2030. The world market today consumes about 85 million barrels per day (imagine what that number will be in 2030, when China and India expand their demand). This would quite literally result in a savings of mere pennies per gallon. That does not "seriously" reduce anything.

But even that scenario is overly-optimistic. The 200,000 figure assumes that all of the land would be available for drilling. However, even if the federal restrictions were eased, the state of California still wouldn't allow drilling off their coast. Their governor, legislature and voters are all pretty solidly against it. That means that approximately half of the 200,000 wouldn't actually be drilled in reality. In addition to that, the companies that finally do get the leases already have more accessible oil under land that has already been opened for leasing. They're not going to drill on the harder-to-get oil under the outer-continental shelf until they first drill in the bigger and easier to reach areas they already have under lease.

What we have here is the McCain campaign using lies and schoolyard taunts to scare up votes. It's really beneath the dignity of a potential President.

UPDATE: Not surprisingly, McCain has seen a significant upswing in oil & gas contributions since he started lying about offshore drilling:

UPDATE II: This isn't anything new for McCain, either. He also lied his ass off about Mitt Romney during the Republican primaries too. Specifically, McCain lied about Romney's positions on the war right before the Florida primaries. When I was watching the debates, this was the moment when it really hit home that McCain was both childish and dishonest (and ignorant):

Graph: Annual Rate of Employment Growth, By President

(via Paul Krugman)

Required Reading

Jamison Foser pretty much nails it here. The most important point to take away here is that the McCain campaign has been tremendously dishonest in recent weeks, they have been called out on their dishonesty, and the news networks have allowed these false and childish narratives to completely dominate their news coverage. First, there is the dishonesty:

Over the past few weeks, and especially the past week, numerous news organizations and other neutral observers have debunked a series of false claims made by John McCain and his campaign. FactCheck.org, for example, has called one McCain attack ad "false," said another contains a "false" insinuation, described another as misleading, called another "ridiculous" and added, "That's absurd, and McCain knows it." FactCheck said the attacks in yet another McCain ad are "oversimplified to the point of being seriously misleading," noting that by the standards of evidence the McCain campaign used in the ad, the Arizona senator himself could be criticized precisely the same way. FactCheck called criticisms McCain has leveled against Obama's tax plans "bunk," adding, "He's wrong," and stating that McCain is using a "false and preposterously inflated figure" to attack Obama. They called another McCain attack "simply wrong" and "not true." They said yet another McCain ad "gets nearly all its facts wrong. ... [E]very number in the ad is wrong, except one. ... And even that number is rounded upward so generously as to flunk third-grade arithmetic." And FactCheck called yet another McCain attack trickery" based on an "inflated and misleading" number that was the result of "Double, Triple and Quadruple Counting."

And that's just in the past month.

The Washington Post has reported that "McCain and his allies" are accusing Obama of "snubbing wounded soldiers by canceling a visit to a military hospital because he could not take reporters with him, despite no evidence that the charge is true" and noted that the evidence the McCain campaign provided to back up the claim did not do so. The New York Times reported that McCain's recent offensive against Obama has been based on claims that have been "widely dismissed as misleading," which is actually an understatement -- they've been widely dismissed as false. A St. Petersburg Times editorial denounced McCain's "nasty turn into the gutter," adding that he "has resorted to lies and distortions in what sounds like an increasingly desperate attempt to slow down Sen. Barack Obama. ... [T]hese baseless attacks are raising more questions about the Republican's campaign and his ability to control his temper." The New York Times editorial board called another McCain attack "contemptible" and "ugly." On MSNBC, Time magazine Washington bureau chief Jay Carney called a McCain ad "reprehensible." MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell reported that a McCain ad is "completely wrong, factually wrong" and that it "literally is not true." The Cleveland Plain Dealer rated a McCain campaign ad a "zero" on its 0-to-10 scale of truthfulness.

All that -- and much, much more -- has come in just the past week.

This should really be a huge deal. The news networks should do their job and act as watchdogs, keeping politicians honest. Instead, they turn around and repeat McCain's narratives ad nauseum.

This point isn't lost on Jamison Foser:

All week, McCain's attacks have been driving news coverage. Those same news organizations that have declared McCain's charges false have given them an extraordinary amount of attention, repeating them over and over. They have adopted the premises of the McCain attacks even as they acknowledge the attacks are based on false claims. The media narrative of the week has not been, as you ight expect, that John McCain's apparent dishonesty may hurt him with voters. Instead, the media's basic approach has been to debunk McCain's attacks once, then run a dozen stories about how the attacks are sticking, how the "emerging narrative" will hurt Obama.

But attacks don't just stick and narratives don't just emerge. The only reason that the topic of the week was whether Obama is presumptuous instead of whether McCain is a liar who will do anything to get elected is that the news media decided to make Obama's purported flaws the topic of the week -- even after debunking the charges upon which the characterization is based. It's as though the news media -- so concerned about lies (that weren't really lies) in 2000 -- have suddenly decided that it doesn't matter that the McCain campaign is launching false attack after false attack. That it's the kind of thing you note once, then adopt the premise of the attack.

UPDATE: Jon Stewart gets it, too (starting at around 2:30).