ANWAR Drilling Proposal Dropped!

Yes indeed, the House dropped it from the budget package.

Democrats elected governor in Virgina and New Jersey.

Democrats pick up three most legislature seats in Virginia,

Dove PA school board members supporting (make that demanding) Intelligent Design ousted.

Bush's approval ratings at another all time low.

Yup, it's been a pretty good week.

 

I saw this in the news this morning and was THRILLED! I agree, it has been a really good week.

 

It is a wildlife refuge and will only give the US maybe a year's worth of gas. It wouldn't help us (or gas prices) that much.

 

Awesome.

 

Well American's are consuming around 7.3 billion barrels of oil annually (about 20 million barrels a day)

http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/cabs/usa.html
http://www.nrdc.org/breakthechain/chained.asp

and there is a 95% probability that there are at least 5.7 billion barrels that are recoverable, and 5% chance that it is up to 16 billion barrels.

http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/oil_gas/petroleum/analysis_publications/arctic_national_wildlife_refuge/html/execsummary.html



Drilling in ANWAR is all about making the rich richer, not reducing our foreign oil dependency.

 

It's kindof like a crack-whore. Y'see, we're all totally dependent on oil, and get it by poltically prostituting ourselves (oil rich nations can have disasterous human rights records, See Saudi Arabia and Niger). Now, we can do the crack head equivelent of stealing some of our grand mother's jewelery (ANWAR) to reduce our need to prostitute ourselves, but it isn't going to help the problem of our dependence at all, in fact it might make it worse.

 

Schwarzenegger's 4 proposals in California failed too. Bad day for Republicans.

Wisconsin democratic party asks Bush to campaign in Wisconsin next time:

http://www.journaltimesonline.com/nucleus/index.php?itemid=2716

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http://www.pollkatz.homestead.com/files/pollkatzmainGRAPHICS_8911_image001.gif

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I think a closer analogy can't be found.

Good one, Eugene.

Gilly, sit up and pay attention, please.

 

And regarding that 'intelligent design' loss in PA, Pat Robertson warns PA voters of God's wrath:

http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/11/10/religion.robertson.reut/index.html

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Most Americans now say Bush is not honest. That used to be one of his strong points.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051111/ap_on_go_pr_wh/bush_ap_poll

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Pat Robertson doesn't have to kiss my ass... he can stop with the asshole. If there was ever a more un-Godly man...

 

Yeah, Robertson is getting increasing frustrated and senile in his old age.

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As long as conservative christians keep acting this stupid they'll never get any support. Not that I'm gonna complain.

 

There is something I’d like to put to the Americans here – yes this has been a bad week for the Republicans but are the US left wingers winning convincing those right wing Americans to change their views?

Or is it just that they blame the Bush admin for failure in implementing their views? Or are we just seeing the slow fall of the neo-con faction, which makes them increasingly ineffective.

In other words are left wingers increasing in numbers or the right wingers just being less arrogant and load. I mean the political forums on hipforums used to be full of baying rights wingers but many are now quiet or absent.

 

People are just saying it's been a bad week for the Republicans.

Personally, I think it's more a matter of what were ardent Bush supporters starting to become disillusioned. Sometimes it takes a while for the emotional patriotic high of the 911-related special status that Bush had over people to wear off and the cold light of practical reason to set in.

Who knows long term trends. The 2006 election should be more interesting.

There are still plenty of Bush supporters on this site. I wouldn't worry about that. Sort of unusual, considering this is a hippy site. I've never seen much of anything in Bush that could be construed as consistent with 60's type hippie values, other than perhaps his drug use. Bush is about the closest thing we've had to Nixon, and people of the 60s hippie culture couldn't stand Nixon.

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Balbus, I'm going to turn it around on you and ask the same question, except that I'll refer to Blair's loss. In that context, ask yourself the question you posed us. That should get you as confused as we are.

Or, to the point, who the hell knows? We're all bozos on this bus.

 

Nice cut and paste job there, Gilly.

You set me to wondering "If it was set aside for OIL, then why is it called 'Arctic National WILDLIFE Refuge'?". So I followed your link and lo n behold, look what I found:

ANWR has its beginnings in 1923 when 23 million acres of land were set aside as an oil reserve for national security. This reserve was known as the Naval Petroleum Reserve Number 4, which would later be called the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska. In 1952-53 a group of scientist released “The Last Great Wilderness”. During the Second World War, this northeastern region of Alaska was used exclusively for military purpose. This article released findings that had been made that concluded that the Northeastern corner of Alaska would be ideal for a wildlife protection area. As a response to this report, the United States Government decided to create two distinct areas in northeastern Alaska. The North Slope area along Prudhoe Bay was set aside for oil and gas production. This was in addition to the original National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska area. The second area was an 8.9 million acre wildlife reserve in the coastal plain region of Northeastern Alaska. This area became the Artic National Wildlife Range, later called the Artic National Wildlife Refuge. After vast amounts of oil were found in Prudhoe Bay, attempts at opening up the protected wildlife refuge were begun (http://arctic.fws.gov/). However, in 1980 the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act was passed. This act increased the size of the reserve to 19 million acres total. Specifically, it set aside 8 million acres for wilderness areas, 9.5 million acres for a wildlife refuge and 1.5 million acres for a Coastal Plain Study Area (http://www.anwr.org/). This 1.5 million acre study area was designated under section 1002 of the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act (http://arctic.fws.gov/). This specific section of the wildlife reserve is where the current controversy is occurring.​

Interesting, huh? And on that site is a nice map that clearly shows that the Naval Petroleum Reserve Number 4, which is the 23 million acres set aside as an oil reserve for national security, is many miles away from ANWR, the wildlife refuge. Here's the map:

​

Wow!! That's quite a difference, huh??!! Not quite what your cut and paste would have a casual reader believe, yeah??!! Good thing I came along to investigate, right??!! Wouldn't want any misrepresentation of the facts, now would we??!!

Hold on... not done yet. I went here to see what this was (hey, it had '.gov' on the end - what does a .gov have to say about ANWR?). This is what the main page says:

​

Well, stone me to my soul! It isn't about the oil! It's about (what's that word??) WIDLIFE!! Who knew??!!