Texas Tea

More bad news for Barack. Not only is Sarah Palin sucking all the oxygen from the political marketplace, but Iraq has been getting better all the time, and now - horrors - the price of oil has lost about a third off its peak a couple of months ago.

Oil dropped below $100 a barrel in New York today for the first time since April amid forecasts that a slowing global economy will curtail energy demand.

Democrats need people hurting for their pitch to work. The cheaper gas and home heating oil are come November, the tougher it will be to sell people on the idea of throwing caution to the wind and electing an unknown with no experience to the highest office in the land.

Futures traded as low as $99.99 a barrel and have erased almost a third of their value since reaching a record $147.27 on July 11. Traders have shrugged off forecasts that Hurricane Ike will hit the Texas coast later today, an OPEC call for reduced supplies and a decline in U.S. inventories.

Who would have guessed it a month ago - Barack getting his butt kicked by White Trash and Black Gold. Yippee!

OPEC's call for members to honor production quotas ``may be the most bearish signal to date in the oil market rout,'' said Antoine Halff, head of energy research at Newedge USA LLC in New York.

Pelosi's Game

Turns out Barack's slippery game on oil matches up with Nancy Pelosi's.

California Democrat Nancy Pelosi may be trying to save the planet — but the rank and file in her party increasingly are just trying to save their political hides when it comes to gas prices as Republicans apply more and more rhetorical muscle.

Barack amongst them.

But what looks like intraparty tension on the surface is part of an intentional strategy in which Pelosi takes the heat on energy policy, while behind the scenes she’s encouraging vulnerable Democrats to express their independence if it helps them politically, according to Democratic aides on and off Capitol Hill.

Ah, now we get it. They're so confident that they're going to win the election that they feel comfortable gaming the American people on a highly emotional, very expensive, issue.

Pelosi’s gambit rests on one big assumption: that Democrats will own Washington after the election and will be able to craft a sweeping energy policy that is heavy on conservation and fuel alternatives while allowing for some new oil drilling.

Republicans should be focusing their anger on Barack, not on Pelosi.

Democratic insiders said that Pelosi and other party leaders were “not rattled” by the GOP floor rebellion, and at this point, it’s not clear if the Democrats will even pay a price on energy. State-level polling conducted by Democrats suggests that voters still view President Bush and the GOP as the incumbent power in Washington, and Democratic strategists believe any anti-incumbent wave would hurt Republicans more than Democrats.

Barack's Oil(y) Ad

Here's Barack's new ad that attacks McCain for having accepted donations from Big Oil. It fails to mention that Barack has, too. New Kinda Politics, eh?

Oil Lies

In a new TV commercial, Barack attacks McCain for being in the bag of big oil for having a) accepted money from the oil companies, and, implying a quid pro quo, b) supported tax cuts for big oil. If you had to guess, would you think Barack's ad is a celebration of the new kinda politics, or the old?

"Every time you fill your tank, the oil companies fill their pockets," the narrator says as the screen reads: "$143 Billion in Profits Over the Last Year.

It's true, the profits of oil companies are hitting record setting levels - in total dollars. On a percentage basis, though, their profits are smaller than those of many other industries.

As the ad cuts to a photo of McCain, the narrator says: "Now Big Oil’s filling John McCain’s campaign with $2 million in contributions," citing the Center for Responsive Politics. "Because instead of taxing their windfall profits to help drivers, McCain wants to give them another $4 billion in tax breaks."

This is blatantly deceptive. McCain hasn't proposed any tax breaks for the oil companies.

This claim, cited on screen as the handiwork of the liberal Center for American Progress, is an apparent reference to McCain's proposal to cut corporate taxes -- for all companies, not just oil companies -- from 35 percent to 25 percent.

What ever happened to Barack as the guy who was going to change the way Washington does business? If he won't represent change in the campaign, why would we expect him to do it once he's in office?

As the camera pulls back from the photo of McCain to reveal him standing with President Bush, the narrator says, "After one president in the pocket of big oil, we can’t afford another. Barack Obama: A windfall profits tax on big oil to give families a thousand dollar rebate. A president who’ll stand up for you."

Has McCain done anything wrong here? Only if you want to indict him for accepting the donations from the very companies which would be effected by his policy proposals, but that is, unfortunately, how our system works. Barack, according to McCain's campaign, has also accepted money from big oil, and he's also making policy proposals that would affect them.

McCain spokesman Tucker Bounds writes to say, "Barack Obama's latest negative attack ad shows his celebrity is matched only by his hypocrisy, after all it was Senator Obama, not John McCain, who voted for the Bush-Cheney energy bill that was a sweetheart deal for oil companies. Also not mentioned is the $400,000 from big oil contributors that Barack Obama has already pocketed in this election."

Flipping Like Burgers

You have to respect Barack for one thing - he's learned from the mistakes of John Kerry, who was frozen in fear four years ago over accusations of being a flip-flopper. Barack gets the crap kicked out of him for just one week and he's flipping positions like they're tofu burgers on the grill in the yard that his felonious fund raiser's wife bought for him.

In early July, Barack said this:

"I do not believe that we should use this strategic oil reserves at this point," he said on July 7 in St. Louis. "...But the strategic oil reserve I think has to be reserved for a genuine emergency."

Today he said this:

"We should sell 70 million barrels of oil from our Strategic Petroleum Reserve for less expensive crude, which in the past has lowered gas prices within two weeks."

Just a few days ago, Barack changed his position on offshore drilling.

Sen. Barack Obama on Friday suggested he could support an energy package that would allow some offshore drilling, a shift from his previous opposition to lifting the congressional ban on such activity. In its lead story, the CBS Evening News reported last night that "critics" say the move is opening Obama "to charges of flip-flopping," and his "new stance could give" Sen. John McCain "fresh ammunition" to continue to hammer at him.

Expanded Flip Flop

Proving once again that in Barack's eyes, any position that matches up with the polls is a good position, The One has now expanded his flip flop on the oil crisis. Last week, he backed off of his opposition to offshore drilling. Today...

Democrat Barack Obama called today for tapping the nation's strategic oil reserves to help drive down gasoline prices, a shift from his previous position on the issue.

The reversal is the second refinement in Obama's energy policy. Last week, he said that he would reluctantly consider accepting some offshore oil drilling. Obama had previously said he opposed such drilling, which is strongly backed by rival John McCain, who has urged that states be allowed to decide whether to drill.

Losing ground to McCain on the issues, Barack has now adopted McCain's positions, even while arguing that McCain holds the wrong positions! Oh, this Obama is a slippery character.

In his speech at Michigan State University, Obama, who celebrates his 47th birthday today, tipped his hat to McCain, quoting the Arizona Republican: "Our dangerous dependence on foreign oil has been 30 years in the making and was caused by the failure of politicians in Washington to think long-term about the future of the country," Obama said.

"What Sen. McCain neglected to mention was that during those 30 years, he was in Washington for 26 of them," Obama said.

And remember when, during primary season, Barack attacked McCain's gas tax rollback proposal as a gimmick? Barack now supports the gimmicks of tapping the Strategic Petroleum Reserves and a Windfall Profits Tax, both of which may sound good to voters, but would have no positive effect on the price of oil.

To learn why, read this:

Tapping the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) is an energy solution for politicians who are not serious about real energy solutions, but H.R 6578 seeks to do just that.

And this:

...according to the Congressional Research Service (CRS), is that the 1980s windfall profits tax depressed the domestic production and extraction industry and furthered our dependence on foreign sources of oil.¹

Same Old Drill

Barack is shrewd to do change his stance on offshore drilling. The question is why anyone would be confused about what he's up to.

Sen. Barack Obama said Saturday he is simply acting pragmatically in softening his opposition to additional oil drilling along the nation's coastline, a shift Republicans say shows he is calculating and out of touch with voters.

Speaking in Florida, Obama insisted he still generally opposes additional drilling—as his Republican rival, Sen. John McCain, once did as well—but would be willing to support it as part of a new bipartisan energy proposal that seeks to lessen dependence on foreign oil.

75% of Americans are in favor of drilling now to help alleviate the gas price crisis. Come voting time in November, folks will be very concerned about the cost of heating their homes this winter.

"If we can come up with a genuine bipartisan compromise, in which I have to accept some things that I don't like, or the Democrats have to accept some things that they don't like in exchange for actually moving us in the direction of actual energy independence, then that's something I'm open to," the Illinois Democrat said.

The nature of legislative compromise is that there are very few things that are entirely non-negotiable. Barack has opened to door to making a claim later that, "I've always said that drilling was on the table," when, in fact, that will be a misrepresentation.

Oil drilling, a hot topic in Florida, has been a point of dispute between Obama and McCain in recent weeks.

Will this drill work again? Sure, why not? It worked on Iraq.

Scared By the Numbers

The Obama campaign saw the numbers, and caved.

With the World Tour having failed to deliver a boost, poll numbers have dropped back to an even race with John McCain.

Barack's strategy? Abandon another position.

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama said Friday he would be willing to support limited additional offshore oil drilling if that's what it takes to enact a comprehensive policy to foster fuel-efficient autos and develop alternate energy sources.

With the only philosophy that Barack holds dear being his own victory, he dumps another policy position, and again throws his core supporters under the bus.

Shifting from his previous opposition to expanded offshore drilling, the Illinois senator told a Florida newspaper he could get behind a compromise with Republicans and oil companies to prevent gridlock over energy.

Another demonstration of the new kinda politics?

Republican rival John McCain, who earlier dropped his opposition to offshore drilling, has been criticizing Obama on the stump and in broadcast ads for clinging to his opposition as gasoline prices topped $4 a gallon. Polls indicate these attacks have helped McCain gain ground on Obama.

Barack's Oil Desperation

Is Barack soft? Here's his reason why drilling for oil - a national security imperative to people who are paying attention to reality - is unnecessary.

"There are things that you can do individually though to save energy," Sen. Barack Obama, D-Illinois, said. "Making sure your tires are properly inflated, simple thing, but we could save all the oil that they're talking about getting off drilling, if everybody was just inflating their tires and getting regular tune-ups. You could actually save just as much."

Jake Tapper at ABC, and others, provide calculations to demonstrate why Barack's assertion is incorrect, but the real point is that it's not an either/or situation. Everyone should take care of their cars to maximize efficiency, but we must face up to urgent need to get off of foreign oil, and all reasonable measures should be pursued to achieve that end.