After 3 years, Obama notices we need our own oil

It was encouraging that President Obama’s State of the Union address this week opened the door to drilling for more U.S. oil to replace some of the oil imports that drain the nation’s wealth and prop up oil-rich tyrants.

He said:

This country needs an all-out, all-of-the-above strategy that develops every available source of American energy.  A strategy that’s cleaner, cheaper, and full of new jobs.

Like Palin. His “all-of-the-above” policy, straight from the mind of Sarah Palin, was a complete reversal from last year’s State of the Union speech, which kept up the pseudo-liberal pretense that we somehow we’ll be able to do without oil within a generation.

Last year Obama mentioned the word "oil" twice, the first time to call for the United States to end its dependence on it, and the second time to call for funding clean energy development by decreasing tax breaks for oil companies.

This year he mentioned oil nine times (10 if you include a reference to a regulation that categorized cow milk as an oil). Gone was any sense that oil was an addiction, as his predecessor George Bush had called it, or something the United States had to reduce its dependence on. He praised the fact that the U.S. produced more oil last year than it had for eight years, and he said that he is opening more areas for offshore drilling. When he called for the development of alternatives to oil, his reason was that we just don't have enough of it in the United States. 

Although Obama sounded supportive of oil, he did call for an end to subsidies for oil companies and for Congress to "double down" incentives for clean energy. He also said he would continue efforts to make sure oil companies can contain oil spills like the one in the Gulf of Mexico. 

Last year, Obama said that U.S. oil dependency could be broken by turning to biofuels and electric vehicles. He didn't mention either this year.

Wealth or poverty. There have been recent breakthroughs in electric cars, which still are run indirectly by burning coal, and in other energy alternatives, and we can expect more advances in the next 20 or 30 years.

In the meantime, if we expect to compete globally and to build the wealth we need for better health care and the other necessities of democratic civilization, we’d better find all the domestic oil and natural gas we can.

Frank Warner

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Note: In the speech, President Obama also mentioned freedom once and liberty once. That's low.

Comments

[George]

You're encouraged by something Obama said?
Obama has said a lot of stuff:

"I will put an end to lobbyists and special interests in Washington" - October 7, 2008

"What I've done throughout this campaign is to propose a net spending cut" - October 15, 2008

"I have been a strong proponent of pay-as- you-go. Every dollar that I've proposed, I've proposed an additional cut so that it matches." - October 15, 2008

"[The stimulus plan] contains an unprecedented level of transparency and accountability so that every American will be able to go online and see where and how we're spending every dime. What it does not contain, however, is a single pet project, not a single earmark, and it has been stripped of the projects members of both parties found most objectionable." - February 9, 2009

"So my bottom line when it comes to the recovery package is: Send me a bill that creates or saves 4 million jobs. Because everybody has to be possessed with a sense of urgency about putting people back to work, making sure that folks are staying in their homes, that they can send their kids to college." - February 9, 2009

Obama is so full of crap I stopped listening to him. November 2012 can't get here fast enough.

[CJW]

But I did enjoy all of those promised CSPAN sessions where Obama highlighted all of the give and take in getting to that fantastic bi-partisan ObamaCare legislation. tic

[krishnascattering]

He's backtracking on the tax cuts and tax increases too. I think he realizes now how stupid he sounded on the campaign trail.