Drill, Drill, Drill

Hey, I agree with W. on something.

He and McCain both want to lift the ban on off-shore drilling. This idea has been extensively criticized, but the criticisms aren't exactly logical.

The complaint that off-shore drilling won't solve our current price-of-gas problem, which is a valid point, is not reason to abandon the idea. If your financial planner advised you to save for retirement, and you rejected the idea because "it doesn't pay my credit card bill today" you would be widely recognized as an idiot who'll be bagging groceries at age 75. Yet that same logic, when applied by democratic congressmen and the media, goes unchallenged.

In case anyone hasn't noticed, the world needs more oil. We need more natural gas. Sure, at some future point we'll have more cost-effective and cleaner energy, but we don't yet - so we have to keep burning those hydrocarbons. We could continue to pay foreign countries that despise us for this necessary fuel, or we could produce the stuff from our own soil. Which idea sounds better to you? This is not rocket science, but common sense.

Oh, you'll hear environmentalists screaming about oil spills and bringing up shit that happened 20 years ago. You'll hear others downplaying the amount of fuel potentially available off-shore (guess what: if you lift the ban, and no oil is found, there won't be any drilling.)

But what really matters here? In a world full of people that hate us, do you want to be completely unprepared for war? How long do you think our high-tech fighter planes and cutting-edge tanks can run without oil? I am not willing to put myself at risk - strategically and economically - to preserve the "international treasure" of our coastlines.

I want to drill for oil offshore, drill in Alaska, and drill in my backyard. That's what high prices are supposed to do in a market economy - increase supply - so that prices eventually decline again. Interference from government is the surest way to wreck a market and make life more painful for all of us.

We cannot afford to be distracted from the barbarians at our gate by short-sighted interest groups. Ask the ancient Romans how that worked out. We need to move forward on energy independence now, and one of the many ways to attack this problem is increased drilling. It won't cure all our ills, but that's not a reason to ignore it.