This article has all the major points but the writing is just convoluted and difficult for the average person to read. The only people who get an article like this are people that have already studied up on the issue and already know the specifics. Ie, those on Salon. Additionally, the Corsi part is something few have heard of and only salient now because of his recent book, which Salon wrote on last week.

I'm not a great writer by any stretch of the imagination but writers about these issues need to be more fluid in presenting a better picture to why these oil stories are largely false. They also need to better reflect why adding x number of barrels of oil from our supply will do little to demand, not just state it as fact. Normal citizens do not understand the oil market well. They understand $4 a gallon gas, not much else. These types of stories need to keep them in mind, not the Salon reader.

I was happy to see that someone tried to tackle the issue, but it's not going to get to an intended target, even if filtered through the Salon readers to the people that need to hear it.

If you found anything in this article difficult to understand, please take some time to look up every unfamiliar term. If the concepts do not make sense, read some basic geology and chemistry. If that does not do it, ask questions. No one can afford to be ignorant of this stuff.

This can't be the default answer to every issue the public doesn't completely understand. People worry about things that are far more important to them than learning about geology and where oil comes from. Ignorance is a fact of life; no one will ever know everything.

Just because people can google everything now and double check wikipedia doesn't provide a solution to the forming a well educated public. The simple fact is that you must know and be able to effectively speak to your audience. The democrats can never seem to figure this point out and then they wonder why we act like we are elitest and talk down to people. This article, and to a larger extent Salon in general, continue this type of discourse, which the larger public tunes out.

Maybe averge joe's have never heard or read Salon but when you talk to someone about this issue, how are you going to talk to them? Give them a quick 5 minute geology lesson first? Explain the supply and demand curve?

We on the left need to better communicate our ideas and defend the false ones by the right more effectively, not tell them to go do research then come back to talk about the issues.

Your elitiest attitude is exactly what I'm talking about. Telling people to go learn about the issues isn't going to get you anywhere.

I think you need to hop on out of the liberal-I-know-better-than-you-do bubble you are in and recognize reality. This seems to be the issue with Salon and other liberal sites. You have all the answers yet you can't seem to get a majority of people to agree with you. Why is that?

And being lied to? So the democratic party is some bastion of truth? Come on. Spin is spin, no matter how you look at it. No issue is black and white. The problem is that the republicans are masters at communicating simple soundbites that go right to the gut feeling of ordinary people while the dems are busy jabbering on and on about some new program that's going to save the world. Hence, our communication sucks.

Dems have yet to figure out how to talk to their audience or even who they are. You have to deal with the people that are out there, not the people you would rather have. People have a limited amount of time to worry about every issue under the sun. If you talk them to death, they won't bother to listen.

So go ahead Mike, tell people to pop open a biology and geology book when they want to discuss why gas prices are so high. Get back to me and see how that works out for you.

On the cone of silence issue, I have to agree with them on this. If he wanted McCain to have the questions earlier I'm sure there was an easy way to get them to him. Consistently complaining about it makes Obama supporters seem whiny and part of this whole conspiracy talk, like they were out to get him. Just drop it.

On going, of course it wasn't a fair venue to go to but I think he got more out of it than you think. He was able to talk to a constituency that probably never was going to vote for him in the first place but I bet he earned the respect of some of those people in the congregation. How many people respect or ever respected Bush? How about the other side with Gore or Kerry?

I think reaching out to other voters that are not in the traditional voting blocks of the past 12ish years is the only way to repair the partisan divide in the country. I firmly believe this fervent support of your "side" is ultimately bad for the nation, regardless of your political leaning. This event, however rigged it may have been, was a good opportunity for Obama to reach out to people that may not agree with his political views, lets them know he hears them, understands where they are coming from, and will try to work with them.

To me, that's what a real leader should be doing and what we've lacked for a long time. I'm glad he did this and I wouldn't be surprised, or appalled, if he went to speak to the NRA next week.