Steny and the Jets

When the telecom immunity bill passed in the House this past Friday, I was reminded of my initial thought process when the Democrats retook said House way back when in 2006. For some reason, the fact that the powers that be selected Steny Hoyer to be their Majority Leader and not Jack Murtha signaled to me that the ‘Democrat’ party did not necessarily mean business; or at least the kind of business expected of them to fulfill in that referendum of a mid-term election. Jack Murtha, whose name is hardly ever mentioned anymore, was (and still is, I presume) the firebrand conservative (or ‘Blue Dog’, if you will) Democrat from Pennsylvania who forced the discussion on the travesty that is Iraq. He almost single-handedly illustrated to the nation that if the roles in congress were reversed, the Democrats would actually DO something about changing course, if not withdrawing entirely. But alas, they chose Steny instead; a man who has the appearance of a mediocre actor attempting to portray a very sleazy politician.

Here’s a brief rundown of recent oil news (or as people in the oil industry call it: news) that I have essentially regurgitated from The Rachel Maddow Show & Countdown w/Keith Olbermann:

Republicans want to drill for oil off the coast of Florida: a) to help drive down gas prices (it won’t) and b) because the Chinese have already beat us to it (they haven’t)! Alaska is the other popular talking point, but apparently the pipelines that will run through the vast territory will actually do a considerable amount of good by keeping the caribou who encounter them warm… John McCain wants to give $300 million to someone who can invent a super-duper car battery that will considerably decrease the need for fuel (he’ll take out three pork barrel projects apparently already in his budget to do so – seriously)… The Saudis declared over the weekend that they would immediately begin to increase oil production – in response the price of a barrel still increased by $1.38… Texas oilman (who sounds like he should be a bluesman), T. Boone Pickens, who funded the now infamous ‘Swift Boat Veterans for Truth’ campaign against then-presidential nominee, John Kerry, is being called upon by the actual swift boat veterans in Kerry’s platoon along with Kerry himself to cough up the $1 million he promised to anyone who could find any factual errors in the claims the campaign had made. This does not necessarily have anything to do with oil, per se, except that Pickens is an oil baron/tycoon. Oh those moronic Texas oilmen…