Obama did do that and if there's justice in the world he'll lose his job for it, although I have little doubt that Romney would be similarly careless with our money. Voting in America means trading on degrees of awful.

Hey, remember when Bush pushed government funding of renewable energy? That was some LOL times, wasn't it?

Yes, I realize that, but that's all the more reason why the author of this post is being ridiculous for placing the blame for our lack of domestic drilling on Barack Obama.

As for my "defeatist argument," I'm not sure why you're quoting me, since I said nothing of the sort. My point was that if we had started drilling in 2008, like the author of this post suggests, we'd be no better equipped today to handle current gas prices than we are.

"If we were drilling for our own oil, as Sarah Palin suggested in 2008 with “Drill Here, Drill Now,” it wouldn’t matter what Iran was doing with their crude, for we would be producing enough oil at home to drastically cut (and eventually eliminate) our use of foreign oil."

Um, you realize that it would take years and years and years to get to the point you're imagining, right? You don't just stick a straw in the ground and pull out oil. You need to locate it, survey the site, build the rig, build the pipeline(s), etc.

That's not a reason to not do it, but even if we had started drilling US soil back in 2008, we'd be years away from producing enough oil domestically to shake off our dependency on imported oil.

Look up the term "ring-fence."

Fertilized embryos aren't people.

Federal funds can't be used to fund abortions. Planned parenthood provides other services, especially to low income women. Besides, planned parenthood funding is a drop in the bucket compared to the asinine amounts of money going to medicare.

Actually, yes: from an individual perspective, voting is an irrational act the only power of which is ritualistic.

I truly don't understand Obama's angle here: nixing a project with bipartisan support because...what? It pleases environmentalists? He hates jobs? Even if he didn't like the project on ideological grounds, this is a stunningly poor political move.

You criticize Sarah Palin and/or complain about the evident anti-intellectual streak in the Republican party when you're a new poster. Then you're stuck in a vicious cycle wherein people vote you down without actually reading what you've written (people have admitted doing this). Then they claim you're a progressive or friends with Saul (Alinsky) or paid to "troll" here by Soros.