Drill, but not on the left coast ...

I haven't looked at even the opinion pieces on Obama's new policy for drilling for oil everywhere on the right coast, so I can't even express misinterpreted facts... Oh yeah, of course I can, since when did being uninformed ever stop an American.

And actually I have looked just a bit of some opinion pieces (well, one piece), and l looked at the blurb on another. "Obama announces a new policy with sensible limits" or a quote to that effect. So it is sensible to ruin the view from the Outer Banks, but not Big Sur? Well, if the South is making noises about going to the Republicans, while California, Oregon and Washington seem more kindly disposed towards Democrats remain untouched ...

What struck me was someone talking about how Obama can't seem to get anywhere on new energy (solar and wind?) or climate change in Congress. So he mentioned nuclear and clean coal in the State of the Union, and now has this nugget/crumb to toss to Republicans; the whole right coast opened up for drilling.

Obama has gone here before. The stimulus went to Congress with a lot of tax cuts in it already, and though the Republicans stonewalled in the House, in the Senate because of either Harry Reid or Obama or both, the Republicans were given the opportunity to step up. Three (the two from Maine and Arlen) did, and reportedly got everything they asked for (true? false? who knows?). Obama was supposedly interested in making health care reform a bipartisan effort form the start, and still made overtures in September to the Republicans on HCR (after a bruising summer), offering to give them a prize in Obama caving on tort reform. But as we know the Republicans had turned into the party of nope, using (seriously) distortions to play on the fears of some in the public about HCR.

Now Obama (who is more and more clearly a pragmatic moderate) is hoping that yet another gift to Republicans of a pre-concession will spur them to compromise on carbon taxes or switching subsidies from coal and oil to solar and wind. I suspect the Republicans are thinking "suckerrrr".