. . . what Pelosi's smoking:

Comedy gold, via AllahP at Hot Air.

Posted by: Attila Girl at 11:05 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
Post contains 17 words, total size 1 kb.

As far as I'm concerned, the scandal is that "Big Oil" isn't giving McCain enough money, vs. Obama—given that the latter seems to intend to decimate the industry, so we can further weaken our military and economic standing in the world.

There's a nice analysis at Flopping Aces.

Posted by: Attila Girl at 07:02 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 50 words, total size 1 kb.

And if you live in D.C., you might drop by this week to offer your support. Those of us in the rest of the country are still figuring out how to tell the GOP legislators to rawk on.

Don't Go.

Posted by: Attila Girl at 04:06 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 50 words, total size 1 kb.

The Ohio GOP—

Via Ed Morrissey, who helps the leftosphere with its arithmetic.

Posted by: Attila Girl at 03:11 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 31 words, total size 1 kb.

Here's the graphic of the day:

Posted by: Attila Girl at 03:01 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 30 words, total size 1 kb.

Let's see if this will get Pelosi's attention.

Posted by: Attila Girl at 02:48 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 14 words, total size 1 kb.

. . . though even McCain is urging him to.

Also, we're being encouraged to call the Capitol Hill switchboard, and ask to speak to Speaker Pelosi.

Posted by: Attila Girl at 11:32 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 39 words, total size 1 kb.

"Does a poll drop count as an emergency?"

All Barack Obama statements come with an expiration date. All of them.

Via Flap, via Twitter.

Posted by: Attila Girl at 11:12 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 30 words, total size 1 kb.

Here's the official list of congressional twitterers.

Posted by: Attila Girl at 11:05 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 11 words, total size 1 kb.

The Republicans are back on the floor today, and Heritage Foundation is blogging it live.

Welcome, Cassandra Readers!
Just a quick note on today's technological angst: Right now, it appears that for some browsers, the main page is down—but not individual entry pages. So, if you're one of my half-dozen readers [ ], or if you want to check the joint out, I'd recommend that you simply use the navigational thingie to scroll through entries, rather than try to get to that elusive, ghostly main page.

Posted by: Attila Girl at 10:55 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
Post contains 93 words, total size 1 kb.

Video cameras on Capitol Hill. Keep going, guys: if they lock you out, meet on the steps. Keep posting video, and tell us where to find it. We'll post it.

Posted by: Attila Girl at 02:41 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 32 words, total size 1 kb.

This is what she'll be doing instead of of working on an energy plan. Per Michelle Malkin:

Speaking of the absent Speaker of the House, here’s her book tour schedule during the Democrats’ vacation. The “Impeach Bush” crowd is dogging her on the book publicity trail. Wouldn’t it be good to see protesters at these events pressing her on issues people really care about?

Like Nan says: Know your power. Hit hard, hit fast, hit often.

8/4/2008 John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum Columbia Point
Columbia Point
Boston, MA 02125
617-514-1645 5:30 pm

8/5/2008 Free Library of Philadelphia (Central Library)
Montgomery Auditorium 1901 Vine St.
Philadelphia, PA 19103
215-567-4341 7 pm

8/6/2008 Temple Judea
5500 Granada Blvd.
Miami, FL 33146
305-442-4408 7:30 pm

8/7/2008 Borders Books
612 East Liberty St.
Ann Arbor, MI 48104
734-668-7652 7 pm

8/11/2008 American Jewish University
Gindi Auditorium 15600 Mulholland Dr.
Los Angeles, CA 90077
310-659-3110 7 pm

8/12/2008 Dominican University
Angelico Hall 50 Acacia Avenue
San Rafael, CA 94901
415-927-0960 7 pm

8/13/2008 Forum for Women Entrepreneurs
Oracle Corporation 500 Oracle Pkwy.
Redwood City, CA 94065
415-382-6022 7 pm

8/14/2008 Cowell Theater
Fort Mason Center, Pier 2
San Francisco, CA 94123
415-643-3400×11 7 pm

8/20/2008 Tattered Cover Bookstore
1628 16th Street
Denver, CO 80202
303-436-1070 5:30 pm

Posted by: Attila Girl at 02:33 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 220 words, total size 2 kb.

Yippee!

Today (well, yesterday, strictly speaking) I was on a conference call with Senator Richard Burr (R, NC) and a baker's dozen of other bloggers about the energy crisis we're experiencing now (which, as Burr points out, is more or less a continuation of the energy crises of the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s).

I can't really do the discussion justice right now, so I'll have a fuller treatment tomorrow. Suffice it to say that this is a good time to keep the pressure on Reid and Pelosi, and to let them know that you're noticing which party doesn't want to solve the current energy crisis until after the fall election, at which point . . . lather, rinse, repeat. (We tap dance and try to kick the can down the road. But it'll be okay, if we've got Obama in the White House!)

Yeah, well.

I think it's clear to most multi-cellular organisms that we can't solve our energy problems with any one "silver bullet": it's a multi-faceted problem, and it'll need a suite of solutions.

It's no secret that I'm partial to a lot of the proposals that Zubrin puts forth in Energy Victory, and that I therefore think flex-fuel vehicles could be pivotal in achieving energy independence. And we must increase supply in the short-term with good, old-fashioned petroleum: we've got to drill like we've got a purpose, while looking to Brazil for ideas about the future. And building nukes and wind farms.

But in the meantime, I'd like to see the Zubrin ideas I'm so taken by—in particular, his notion of switching to an "Alcohol Economy" that leans hard on ethanol and methanol—compared to the Pickens plan. Or: the Pickens Plan.

So, discuss, please, my engineering-minded homies. And I'll have more thoughts for you tomorrow. Or at least more data.

Actual coverage of the discussion with Senator Burr, from those who didn't spend the day handling computer upgrades and buying furniture:

• Flopping Aces; and

• Betsy Newmark.

Posted by: Attila Girl at 02:17 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
Post contains 339 words, total size 3 kb.

Got it via Insty.

Posted by: Attila Girl at 10:35 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
Post contains 24 words, total size 1 kb.

They are both mythical beasts.

I'm sorry, but if people didn't think Yugos provided sufficient protection, they are not going to buy inflatable cars.

Word.

h/t: Insty.

Posted by: Attila Girl at 06:48 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
Post contains 45 words, total size 1 kb.

over at Classical Values:

If we can't drill our way out of our immediate problems, there is no immediate solution. Why? It is a matter of logistics and infrastructure. Our experience with the transition from wood to coal and coal to oil is instructive. Those transitions took about 75 to 100 years. Why? Whole new methods of production and infrastructure had to be developed. It is a problem of capital and logistics. Take our automotive fleet. It turns over at the rate of about 6% a year. That means a 15 or so year transition period if ALL the new vehicles embody the new energy technology. Add in another 4 to 10 years for the design of the new vehicles and the development of the support infrastructure. Say the new technology is electric of some sort. We need to be able to produce 15 million automotive qualified electric motors a year. So before we can even get up to full scale production of the transition vehicle we need quite a few new electric motor factories. How about power electronics to control the motors? Say the typical motor had a peak rating of 50 KW. That would require 750 megawatts of control electronics a year. Which is no small amount. We don't have the capacity for it. It takes 3 to 5 years to raise the capital and build a new semiconductor plant. Just to get a 15 year transition we would have to build all the support industry all at once. That will take around 5 years provided we know exactly what we want.
Which just goes to show that nothing is impossible for the man who doesn't have to do it.

He concludes:

There is no magic bullet. We are going to have to muddle our way through. Slowly. For as long as it takes.

There are a couple of things to do while working towards change:

1. Do not panic
2. Drill for more oil

Read the whole thing.

Posted by: Attila Girl at 12:21 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
Post contains 343 words, total size 2 kb.

Mitch McConnell suggests in the WSJ that—notwithstanding it being an election year, and all that—Congress might consider doing its job with respect to the energy crisis:

The Gas Price Reduction Act is composed of just a few ideas. But taken together, the proposals will address the problem head on. They include deep-sea exploration more than 50 miles off the coasts of the states that want it, lifting a ban on development of the promising and plentiful oil shale deposits in western states, and increased incentives for the development of plug-in electric cars and trucks. The bill also includes provisions to strengthen U.S. futures markets and guard against excessive speculation.

The Gas Price Reduction Act is a sensible approach to gas prices that squarely faces something too many in Washington would rather ignore: the law of supply and demand. Conservation is an idea that both parties support and both parties have addressed legislatively. But if prices are going to go down, supply has to go up too. This means Democrats will have to abandon their traditional opposition to domestic exploration by lifting a congressional ban on off-shore exploration.

Don't forget the flex-fuel vehicles, guys: they're just as essential as hybrids/electrics to the transition we're entering. Probably more so. Unless you wanted to re-build the entire transportation infrastructure of this country from scratch? I didn't think so . . .

(Cross-posted at Right Wing News.)

Via Hot Air.

Posted by: Attila Girl at 08:38 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
Post contains 248 words, total size 2 kb.

It would be a good start.

I've been noticing that gas-price duality among the liberati for years now, and of course it's always made perfect sense to me. That's why I could hear NPR do a piece about the evils of high gas prices in the morning, and that afternoon report that our gas prices are very "low" by the standards of other developed countries. There's no contradiction, really: my lefty friends want to make things hard for the working class at the same time that they want to delude themselves that they really want to make things easier. Give with one hand; take with the other.

I still think we need flex-fuel vehicles (as Robert Zubrin insists in Energy Victory), and an eventual transition to alcohol fuels such as ethanol and methanol. We certainly need to end the tariffs that keep sugar-cane ethanol out of this country, and we must obliterate the ban on the use of shale-oil products in the U.S. military. But we also need to keep the oil flowing, preferably from non-OPEC sources. Like, um, let's see . . . how about the United States? That's one of my favorite non-OPEC oil-producing countries. I like Canada, too. And Mexico's cool. Also: the less we schlep our petro products around, the smaller our carbon footprint. Let's tread lightly on the Earth.

Drilling the OCS is only the beginning; we also must make better use of our own shale oil. And, contra Senator McCain, we must drill in ANWR. As Alaska's Governer, Sarah Palin, is fond of pointing out, the footprint of the proposed facility is the size of a metropolitan airport: in the vastness that is ANWR, you'd be hard-pressed to even find it if you didn't know where to look (or unless you had an ugly-meter on you—that is some hard-core ugly terrain).

So, yes, please: keep the pressure on. Drill that Outer Continental Shelf. But let's press on, here: just a handful of common-sense actions can bring us the energy independence we so desperately need, and bring us relief at the pump.

h/t: Ace of Spades

(Cross-posted at Right Wing News.)

Posted by: Attila Girl at 08:00 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
Post contains 382 words, total size 3 kb.

When I drop an earring at night while getting out of my car, I always lock the car door and head out for the area underneath the nearest streetlight, because if I'm going to look for an earring, I want to do it where the light is strongest.

Likewise, Democratic legislators are now very pro-drilling. They aren't in favor of drilling where there's a good chance of finding oil, but they are pro-drilling. Surely that's progress . . . !

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer wants people to know that Democrats like oil drilling. A lot. They're just very picky about where.

"Democrats are saying let's drill. Let's explore. Let's get energy for Americans from America and have it for Americans," Hoyer told reporters Tuesday. He was announcing that Democrats will unveil an energy production bill Thursday.
Asked a minute later if the proposed bill would allow new offshore drilling, Hoyer told IBD no.

"There is not offshore drilling" in the bill, the Maryland Democrat said. Drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is similarly off-limits. Instead it focuses on drilling in already-leased areas.

Read: areas where the oil companies have already looked for oil, and found none.

Gotta go now: I'm headed to the latest Brighton outlet. Somehow, I never did find that missing earring. Mysterious, no?

Posted by: Attila Girl at 08:27 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
Post contains 230 words, total size 2 kb.

The President has just lifted the ban on offshore drilling. (That is the Executive Order side of it: the congress has its own ban, which remains intact.)

Pelosi calls this move a "hoax"; she'd prefer that we simply raid our own oil reserves. (Because why would you get a job and earn money when you could simply withdraw from your own savings account? The suggestion that we drill in the U.S. and off of its coasts is simply crazy talk.)

People are getting fed up with this obstructionism.

Posted by: Attila Girl at 07:40 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
Post contains 94 words, total size 1 kb.