"...we only have 3 percent of the world's oil supplies..."

The whole point of opening up these new areas to drilling is to find out whether they have enough oil to increase that 3% figure. If we keep them locked up, we will never know what might be down there. Brazil's discovery of a huge new pool on its outer continental shelf has raised hopes that there is exploitable oil down there.

Biden might not want to strum that global warming string too hard either. Palin will just respond with the dreaded N word, perhaps accompanied a challenge to pry open the Yucca Mountain repository.

"women taking such RAW delight in stabbing other women is SO not feminism."

...but so in character for people who so lightly toss aside their presumed civil rights values when a the 'wrong' cultural and political values are involved. As it was with Clarence Thomas, it is once again with Sarah Palin.

"The lovechild of Tracy Flick and Ellie Mae Clampett. The recitation of memorized fluff was insulting. The forced folksiness was nauseating."

Ah, the smell of elite, twisted panties scorching, cementing my resolve to vote the Palin/Whatshisname ticket next month.

So the left is concerned that the fundie Christian wing of Palin's support will be an undue influence on the Republicans. The 'beam in thine own eye' here is the rabidly religious fundie wing on the left that holds up human progress in the name of their deity, Gaia. As we all know ad nauseam by now, they call themselves Greens.

They have now found still another cause to bash mankind:

http://blogs.wsj.com/environmentalcapital/2008/04/28/green-line-california-transmission-battle-divides-environmentalists/?mod=WSJBlog

Yeppers: in the middle of an energy crisis, they are trying to prevent a new transmission line being built across California's Mojave Desert, one of the bleakest wastelands in the world, that would bring solar power from desert collection plants to urban markets. In fact, they have even started protesting the collection plants themselves.

Just like you, I believe in taking the establishment clause with utmost seriousness. The difference that I also believe in consistency. The cause Greens are hurting right now is, unfortunately, your own. Historically, financial crises are good news for Democrats. This one has already yielded a small bounce for Obama. All he has to do now is promote a Roosevelt-style energy development program to get the economy moving again, and he's in. But like most other Democrats, he is afraid to piss off the old hippies by actually building out, publicly or privately, large amounts of new energy capacity.

If religious cranks controlled the Republican platform this tightly, we would never hear the end of it.

...because this thread is about to go Godwin. If you're afraid of Christian fundies, consider this gem from those other fundies:

"You self-deluded, cannibalistic devotees of Satan deserve the theft of your money and you also deserve the utter destruction the Jews will bring to America, the torment you will endure in the grave and the torment of the Hellfire that awaits you for living and dying believing the Jews lie; that god is a white man named Jesus. Allah says that Jews and Christians are the worst of His Creatures.

Praise be to Allah. Your God is One."

Yes, there was a time when Christians did believe such swill, and went around beheading people in the name of God. Today, we call this period the Dark Ages. Unfortunately, the Muzzie dark age is right now.

"Our problem is not that we've allowed our economy to devolve into little more than a sophisticated form of three card monte; it's that the underlying fundamentals of our economy, thanks to globalization and free market fundamentalism, created a situation in which said transformation of our economy was a NECESSITY for the US to maintain even a semblance of prosperity. We've been running on fumes for decades now, to put it mildly."

Net new wealth comes into the American economy only when we (a) extract new resources from the ground or (b) make breakthroughs in technology. All other economic activity is so much zero-sum shuffling of existing assets among pockets. Though plan (a) sufficed when the nation was young and still exploring its physical resources, most new wealth in a mature economy depends on plan (b).

If there are going to be jobs and new wealth once again, both parties need to get over their qualms about technology to allow the country to innovate again. God will not punish us for using stem cells, and neither will Gaia be offended if we engineer her species' DNA.

"McCain wants to increase our reliance on nuclear energy. 92% of the uranium used in civilian power plants is IMPORTED - 32% is imported from RUSSIA."

...As in 'facts, traditionally defined as stuff that's true'. Most of the world's uranium is currently being produced by Canada, Australia and Kazakhstan. The US has plenty of uranium reserves in several states, but we are just emerging from years of domination by the flat-earth fundamentalists, and have not been allowed to mine it. In fact, the fundies just inveigled Congress - in the middle of an economic crisis - into locking up a million acres of uranium reserves right here in Arizona, on grounds that the Grand Canyon is located in the same state.

Another four hundred Dow points lost today, as Congress fiddles while the uranium doesn't burn.

@Everythings Jake

"Also, it's the nuclear age and the nuclear issue is probably the most important any leader will have to face in the immediate and coming years - let's, for the sake of any god still extant, pronounce the damned word correctly in the interests of common meaningful useage since we're all going to need to be a part of that discussion."

While you yutzes quibble over her pronunciation, Palin demonstrates an actual understanding of the issue.