I think, by now, most Americans realize that oil alone is not the answer.

And oil at the expense of Florida's tourism industry will never sell.

I would imagine that Obama is already planning the ad buys.

This sort of thing is not estimated to work to fix anything, though. The best estimates are that it could work in a few years, and even then, the most positive estimates rely on surrounding factors.

Working on alternative energy, encouraging people to keep buying hybrids and figuring out ways to give states mass transit and carpool program money is a far better way to go to lower gasoline prices.

And "adapting to reality" is not what's going on here. It's "trying to create a new reality, and failing."

Additional drilling is not the answer -- and I think people are beginning to realize it. The combustion engine is ridiculously inefficient, and its time has come.

If anything, I think McCain is making a run for Michigan with this, thinking Florida is safe bet. Michigan won't bite -- too many other things wrong for a Republican to get 20 feet from winning.

is not leadership.

And this is an election year. You don't give Bush/McCain credit for ANYTHING, even if you mistakenly think it might be right. If you can't say anything bad about them, don't say anything at all.

Screw Valdez. There have been plenty of Gulf oil spills in the last dozen years or so to choose from.

http://www.defenders.org/newsroom/press_ releases_folder/2006/03_07_2006_environm entally_gentle_drilling_causes_major_cru de_oil_spill.php

Last week during the Senate Energy Committee's hearing on the Fiscal Year 2007 Budget, Chairman Domenici praised Secretary Norton and the Department of Interior for promoting "environmentally-gentle" oil development in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.   Just days after these remarks, America got an unfortunate preview of just how "gentle" oil drilling operations could be if allowed on the Arctic Refuge's fragile Coastal Plain.

On Thursday, March 2, a BP oil operator discovered signs of an oil spill at a caribou migration site on the snow-covered tundra of Alaska's North Slope.  Three days later, response workers finally uncovered the source of the spill - a breach in an oil transit pipeline feeding into the larger trans-Alaska oil pipeline infrastructure stretching some 800 miles across the state.

Clean-up crews have already vacuumed up more than 50,000 gallons of crude oil and melted snow off the delicate tundra but at least one report from an industry expert has indicates that this spill could be the largest crude oil spill in the history of North Slope - second in Alaska only to the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill.  Oil is still dripping from the breached pipeline and the full extent of the damage and affected acreage are unknown. The multi-agency spill response team will attempt to come up with an estimated spill volume in the next two days.

This weekend's accident is just one in a long history of substantial spills seen on Alaska's fragile North Slope since development began there.  In fact, despite industry hype about the safety of development and new technology, the Prudhoe Bay oil fields and Trans-Alaska Pipeline have caused an average of 504 spills annually on the North Slope since 1996, according to the Alaska's own Department of Environmental Conservation.  Past spills have included a 300,000 crude oil spill from the Trans-Alaska pipeline that was detected as far as 166 miles away; a 110,000 gallon crude oil spill caused by a bulldozer which created a geyser that spewed oil over 20 acres of tundra wetlands; the infamous 285,000 gallons of crude oil that spilled into the boreal forest after a local hunter shot the pipeline with a high powered rifle; and the disastrous 675,000 gallons that were leaked after a saboteur exploded a two inch hole in the pipeline just a few miles north of Fairbanks.

The U.S. does not have enough untapped oil to affect prices to any significant degree, nor would any of that untapped oil even enter the system for years due to the time it would take to drill and develop the necessary infractructure.  

You can tell how much of a dog and pony show this is because, whenever Republicans talk about it, they focus on the billions of gallons of oil that could be drilled, but never mention the amount of oil that this country consumes.  If they did, people would be able to do the math and see that we are talking about a very small amount of oil in the grand scheme of things.  They want you to be entranced by the word "billions" and forget to ask what that number really means.

The Santa Barbara oil spill occurred in 1969 in the Santa Barbara Channel. The source was a January 28, 1969 blow-out on Union Oil's Platform A, six miles offshore. Over a 10-day period, an estimated 3 million gallons of crude oil spilled into the channel and onto the beaches of Santa Barbara County in Southern California.

"Unless Crist pushes it?"

I seem to recall Obama has some ability to raise funds for advertising in states during this election year. If he's hurting for topics, this case of craven GOP pandering + politically disasterous local issue might prove useful.

Oil companies are not producing oil or gas on the vast majority of federal land onshore and offshore already under their control.  Offshore, Big Oil is producing on only about 23 percent of the land they hold, while onshore, companies are producing on roughly 27 percent of the acres to which they hold the drilling rights.

Wow. I didn't know that. What a disasterous stat. Might also prove useful for some Florida advertising, as previously noted.

I watched when the big oil ceo's were in front of the committee on cspan.  The Dems really pushed this point...It was great...

God help me for saying this, but if Obama can get some of the evangelical voters, it might not matter. I feel like slime, but that might be how it goes.

I hate people that say that... treat every state like your 20 points down...

NO... YOU DON'T.  Period.  Most often, especially ina  Presidential election, you don't waste resources on these states.  You do STUPID and DESPERATE things to move up.

Instead, treat it like your tied and the extra effort pushes you to victory.