I think you might be on to something. I've gotten the impression that the Obama campaign wants to repeat the same plan from the primary: build up the ground game, campaign extensively, and then follow up with media saturation. The only problem is that they aren't flying under the radar anymore. It's unrealistic to expect that the McCain campaign is not going to try and seize the initiative, and the media is busy creating the false drama of which candidate is winning or losing each day. So is Obama keeping his powder dry and not firing until he sees the whites of their eyes, or is his effete rockstar campaign getting overrun by the rovian hordes?

Obama will have enough money in the fall to make all of us more than sick of political TV ads. It's probably smart to wait until after labor day to let slip the dogs of war. He just has to make sure he doesn't get knocked out before then.

We should outlaw the use of all petroleum 100% instantly right now. Just leave it for all those less evolved countries to consume. We should be fine, warming ourselves by the glow of our own insufferable piety.

Your "subject" line asks "What is ridiculed?" The McCain campaign is ridiculing Obama's energy policy largely because of the tire gauge thing (http://www.politico.com/blogs/jonathanmartin/0808/McCain_camp_amps_up_tire_gauge_gag_.html). Regardless of whether it's sound policy, I feel like Obama should have saw this coming, and been ready with hard figures. It almost would have been a great way to bait the McCain camp into ridiculing the idea, and then spank them with the numbers. I feel like the Obama from the primaries would have had the numbers ready.

That's pretty good!

No sarcasm intended whatsoever. That's actually quite good.

The conversation we need to have about energy policy in this country finally comes front and center. Thank God! And it would appear that Barack Obama gets this issue right on several fronts. First of all, realistically speaking, it's going to take a lot of money to make any appreciable difference on climate change and weaning us off foreign oil or oil in general. Naturally, John McCain's people (as well as George W. Bush's people, and Dick Cheney's people)would like to use falling gas prices as a sign that we don't need to do anything meaningful on the issue, but that's actually beside the point. The other truth is that we need a thriving economy in the short term to get any susbstantive government investment behind any of Obama's proposals. So gas prices have to come down at least a fair bit. People need to stop feeling squeezed. Then, the White House (presumably an Obama White House), Congress and the media are going to have to get behind a massive re-education effort to gather public support for the shift we're trying to make. THAT COSTS MONEY!! A sputtering economy won't generate the dollars needed to get us there and the so-called "free market" won't move fast enough without incentives. Because as much as conservatives worship an unregulated market and economic "survival of the fittest", they won't say no to government giveaways. The hypocrisy of that is lost on no one here, I'm sure. But I digress.

Barack Obama's energy proposal is chock full of all the things conservatives despise. On any new drilling there would be REGULATION and OVERSIGHT, which gives the modern GOP the shakes, since any sort of regulation is too much. It includes TAXES on oil company profits and GOVERNMENT HANDOUTS to people who have a hard time with making ends meet as a consequence of "trusting the market" to get it right. It also includes NEW SPENDING for auto companies to reconfigure and re-imagine our transportation sector, and our love affair with the automobile.

All of this would make the most moderate Republican break out in hives. It's a wonder that a bipartisan compromise of this type ever made it out of this Congress.

I agree with Andrew. This is the right plan.

Of course, George Bush will never sign it, but what else is new?

That's an interesting point. But considering that NASCAR and even the Bush Admin suggest properly inflating tires, perhaps the Obama campaign could be cut some slack. Maybe we should give the McCain campaign credit for making a mountain out of a molehill and working the media, which has been dying for a good dustup between Obama and McCain.

And Obama released an Energy Plan to go along with his tire gauges. Now he needs a way to sell it into the media sound bite wars.

Obama's plan is not perfect, but it looks like the best plan since the Carter years (yeah, that may not be saying much). Correct me if I'm mistaken.

link: http://www.nascar.com/2006/auto/07/25/tires/

This nation truly deserves its fate.

More and more, it seems to me that America only learns by pain. We've made a fetish out of stupidity and anti-intellectualism. We ignore the facts of the world as if sticking our heads in the sand will somehow make unpleasant reality go away. People knew decades ago that we were headed for an oil crisis - hell, I myself wrote a paper about it in college, based on reports available in the library.

But we just keep shoveling those tax breaks to the oil companies. What the hell is wrong with us?

The Depression taught people something. For one thing, it taught America the value of government regulation of the financial industry. Then we forgot that lesson in the 1980s, and now it's biting us in the throat.

Vietnam taught us the folly of getting into a foreign war without a goal or an exit plan. We forgot that lesson sometime in the 90s, I guess, and now our soldiers are shedding blood to pay for it.

Government spying run amok, corruption, torture...what form will our new lessons take? How high a price will we all have to pay to learn, once again (for how long?) that our rights are precious, and that our place in the universe is NOT assured?

"I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just." - Thomas Jefferson