Yes, she has the perfect energy policy for low information voters to latch on to. Unfortunately, it's not an energy policy that is going to solve any problem we have - but that won't stop the electorate from choosing to follow it.

Nuclear? The free market has decided to not bother. Clean coal? 20 years away - still. Alaskan oil? If we used all our oil to displace foreign oil (call it 20 billion barrels of domestic supply), assuming we could pump it out of the ground at a rate of 13 million barrels per day (highly unlikely), then in 4 years, instead of being 67% dependent on foreign oil, we would be 100% dependent at that time. Just to power 80 mph speedboats cheaply for a few more years. That's some long time thinking we can believe in.

Oil shale in Wyoming? How do Wyomans feel about a huge swatch of their state being turned into an industrial mining site? For the cost of the pipeline from Alaska ($30 billion) and the cost of the natural gas for the years it is in use, how much gas could be saved by spending that money on conservation and efficiency? If roughly comparable, why not do the easy thing first?

All these solutions create new problems. The only solution that creates no new problems is conservation. Its cheap, ready, quick, and easily understood. The technology is there. We just need to will to do it. And to convince conservatives that it isn't a scheme by bunny huggers to have a one world government control the United States.

Oh, and conservation reduces greenhouse gas emissions, too.

I think its time for the pundit class to draw a distintion between what I call a pronouncement and a policy.

A pronouncement is something a politician says.

A policy is something a politician might say, but it differs from a pronouncement in that a policy takes into account all known facts, and the impact of the decision 5 and 10 years hence.

Saying "drill here, drill now" is a pronouncement, not a policy. If it were part of a statement with data and facts on global warming, peak oil, world oil markets, rate of removal, time to get to that rate of removal, and a plan for what to do when that patch runs out - that would be a policy.

Sarah Palin and John McCain make pronoucements - about more than just energy; they don't have any policies.

I think there is something more subtle going on here: McCain and Palin are trying to make the other side so scary that people vote AGAINST Obama, since there is surely no reason for more than a small group (the 22 percenters that still support Bush) to vote for McCain. How does someone in McCain's position get votes? Not by making an affirmative case for himself, but by scaring people about the other side. That way, people can justity their votes for McCain by declaring that they were against Obama.

Think about it!

My wife and I, with three kids under 3, have a 2003 Passat Wagon; a 1996 Honda Civic; and a 1995 BMW M3. We drive the Passat when we take the kids; we drive the Civic (the only undented body panel is the hood) when there are two or three of us (it gets the most use); and I drive the M3 sparingly for fun, when I need the car to project an image for others to observe.

And yet...we can't carry one more person than our family, without moving to an SUV or Minivan. This is true. The Volvo wagon has two seats in the back that can't be used with child seats; there are no other car choices. All three of our cars can break 30 mpg on the highway. No SUV or Minivan can get close. What are we to do? GM and VW offer 7 passenger 40+ MPG vehicles in Europe; they don't offer them here. That is what we want.

The author pinned this question on society by buying a SUV; what are YOU going to do about getting me more oil and mitigating my increased contribution to climate change? We believe in personal responsibility so pin the question on ourselves: how do we get around the occasional need to carry 6 or 7? We have chosen so far to arrange our lives to never need to carry more than 5; we will buy a trailer and hitch for road trips. At some point, when VW offers the Sharan 7 passenger van here that gets more than our Passat wagon, we'll be first in line.

3 car seats will fit across the back seat easily. Or two seats and an adult.

First, I want to echo what everyone already knows: that this is a publicity stunt that won't have any teeth by the time the text of the law is detailed. Guaranteed. You protect your own. There will be armies of consultants figuring out how to get around this, and a few interns trying to create an airtight law. No contest. For this law to have teeth, the compensation consultants need to be working on our side.

My main point is this: Americans sign up to risk their lives in wars for $30,000 and decent health care. They will fall on a grenade for this amount. They do it without complaining, even when we are tricked into war.

Yet these executives won't make a sacrifice to live on $500,000 per year to help the country. They can still go home every night and sleep with their wives. They have savings to fall back on. Can Obama shame these people with patriotism into fixing or to help fix what they have wrought? Will he please use this opportunity to show that the wealthy have allegiance primarily to themselves, and not to us? Their status in society needs to be downgraded to the lowest rank, and this is how you do it. As Obama said at his inaugural, work should be rewarded, not failure. If he wants to win the votes of the working class, here is his chance to do so.