Why The Lie, Pres?

Once again, President Bush tells the American people that if only that darned Congress would lift all the bans on offshore drilling, gas would become reasonable again. One can only wonder what he's really up to since that is a total fabrication--and he knows it.

It is clear as a bell that no matter HOW MANY acres of shelf are available for drilling, the result of drilling will not come any time soon (perhaps 10-15 years out). There are many reasons for this, among them a huge shortage of ships, equipment and other infrastructure needed for the task, and the fact that the oil companies already have 68 million acres on hold not in use.

Bush himself lifted the Executive Order banning offshore oil development (put in place by his father, ironically) on Monday. In California, Governor Schwarzenegger has indicated there will be NO offshore drilling on his watch.

In fact, some in Congress want to start a "use it or lose it" program regarding the 68 million lease acres not being used. Fine by me if that will shut everyone up while we move forward to achieve the 10 year 100% renewable electric program unveiled by Al Gore yesterday
(see this post).

If you will recall, one of George Bush's reasons to go to war in Iraq (among the others he made up) was to stabilize the price of oil. Ha! Do oil prices look stabilized to you as we spend $2 billion a day in Iraq? Why not get out of Iraq, as that country's leader is now asking us to do, and just hand out the $2 billion/day to the people it came from (taxpayers) instead of Halliburton etc. while saving a whole lot of lives in the process? That way maybe we could afford the gasoline he promised would stabilize in price, but which, in barrel price, has quadrupled.

Read
this history. Note Halliburton's involvement prior to our, um, war-turned occupation.

It would appear that Bush won't be happy until every acre of public land has oil rigs or pipelines, coal mines, shale oil mines, or tar sand capturing facilities on them. After all, what are public lands for other than to further enrich the already wealthy?

Just ask Halliburton about their no-bid contracts. They seem pretty darned happy. Between
2002-2003 (during the 'behind the scenes' ramp up to the war), Halliburton stock was in the toilet about $5/share. Today, even in this unstable market, it closed at two cents short of $47.

Dick Cheney is probably happy too. He served as Halliburton's CEO from August of 1995 until August of 2000. Cheney is now worth approximately
$94 million, his stock rising approximately 3,000 percent last year alone though he has repeatedly stated he has no financial tie to Halliburton which is a big fat lie.

Oh. So that's why Bush is lying. Gotta guarantee a profitable future for those oil boys.

But then, didn't we already know this? So why would anyone support offshore drilling?