Foreign Policy Triumphs

So the Sunnis in Iraq aren't talking to us anymore because US military forces killed a man who allegedly opened fire on troops as they attempted to arrest someone they considered as an insurgent leader (the Sunnis retell the story differently). The Iraqi Islamic Party, the largest Sunni bloc in Parliament, has suspended all contacts with the US.

Pakistan has suspended all military action against militants along their border with Afghanistan and passed a resolution calling for dialogue with those groups. The near-unanimous opinion of the Parliament was that Pakistan was paying too heavy a price for "America's war" and that "We need to prioritise our own national security interests."

And OPEC, a cartel that includes Iraq - that country we "liberated" and is supposed to, in George Bush's mind, hold some sort of gratitude for us - is cutting oil production by 1.5 million barrels a day because the price feel unacceptably to around $65/barrel.

Um, does anybody still think that the Russian invasion of Georgia was the greatest foreign policy crisis since the end of the Cold War?

There Is No Other Good Title For This But "Drill Baby Drill"

Really, I tried to come up with something different, but it's too perfect:

Government officials handling billions of dollars in oil royalties engaged in illicit sex with employees of energy companies they were dealing with and received numerous gifts from them, federal investigators said Wednesday.

The alleged transgressions involve 13 Interior Department employees in Denver and Washington. Their alleged improprieties include rigging contracts, working part-time as private oil consultants, and having sexual relationships with — and accepting golf and ski trips and dinners from — oil company employees, according to three reports released Wednesday by the Interior Department's inspector general.

In bed with Big Oil. Literally.

Meanwhile OPEC's going to cut supply, making a total mockery out of any of these "drill now" efforts, because no amount of spigot opening on our coasts could have as much of an impact as one nod of the head from the Saudis. We have to get off oil. But with Republicans in the White House, we won't, because the GOP and Big Oil are fucking each other. Actually fucking each other.

Please go back to talking about lipstick now.

Ugh, Part II

Instead of forcing Republicans to make a bad vote on SCHIP, the Democratic leadership is likely to force their own party to make a bad vote on energy.

Democratic Caucus Vice Chairman John Larson (Conn.) said the majority is prepared to back "responsible" offshore drilling through a bill that could be brought to the floor as early as [this] week.

But the Democratic energy bill will also include past provisions pushed by the party – but that failed to pass the House with the two-thirds majority required under the procedural rules that Democrats chose to use – including the "use it or lose it" provision and a release of oil from the strategic reserve.

"We will consider responsibly opening portions of the Outer Continental Shelf for drilling while demanding that Big Oil companies use the leases they have already been issued or return them to the public," Larson said Saturday in the Democratic response to the President’s radio address.

At least on this one, I understand the play here. They're going to try and force the Republicans into voting against drilling because of their fealty to Big Oil. I just don't have a lot of confidence that they can make that argument to the greater public. Republicans will just say that "the Democrat leadership hasn't given us an upperdown vote on drilling now" or something. And because the moratorium on drilling offshore has to be reinstated every year, and I fully expect the GOP to vote no on anything including that moratorium, I fully expect the cave to be coming along any day now.

Meanwhile, our side is at least using our activist tools.

As many as 100 protesters stormed a press conference by House Republicans on the West Front steps of the Capitol Monday, as GOP lawmakers argued that the American public supports their plan to address the high cost of gasoline.

The press conference came at the end of a six-week long energy protest on the House floor, with Republicans occupying an empty chamber and demanding Speaker Nancy Pelosi hold a vote on their energy plan that includes increased domestic drilling [...]

At one point, a protester interrupted, yelling “you’re an idiot!”

The protest was organized by Environment America, the League of Conservation Voters and other environmental groups.

Meanwhile, anything that's done on the domestic side will pale in comparison to the rumblings at the OPEC meeting that the cartel will ease production in an effort to grow the price. Oil has dropped 30% from its height due to lowered demand (somehow that never gets mentioned in this debate), and OPEC needs that number back to $140 a barrel or else their citizens will have to forage for berries to eat. The idea that any domestic production would matter in 10 years when OPEC can turn off the spigot today is ludicrous.

...Democrats in Congress ought to pounce on this.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The nation's public transportation systems logged a 5.2 percent jump in ridership in the second quarter, according to industry figures to be released Tuesday, as record-high gas prices pushed people to take millions more trips on buses and rail systems.

Mass transit here, mass transit now.

Whining and Crying Instead of Innovating

Oil prices shot up today on fears of shortages, leading the US Congress to pass the latest in a series of stupid laws regarding our energy future:

The House of Representatives overwhelmingly approved legislation on Tuesday allowing the Justice Department to sue OPEC members for limiting oil supplies and working together to set crude prices, but the White House threatened to veto the measure.

The bill would subject OPEC oil producers, including Saudi Arabia, Iran and Venezuela, to the same antitrust laws that U.S. companies must follow.

The measure passed in a 324-84 vote, a big enough margin to override a presidential veto.

It's a nice election-year "are you with us or are you with the oil companies" vote, but it's the complete opposite track of how we should look at the situation.

A substantial amount of the oil in the world has already been pumped out of the ground. What's left is going to be harder and costlier to reach. It's called peak oil, and nobody wants to talk about it, but in all likelihood we're already there. OPEC would be pretty happy getting $130 a barrel for oil if they had excess capacity to pump. I'm not at all sure they do.

But whether they do or not, trying to lower the price of gas on the margins is insufficient to the problem. Iran says a lot of stuff that's not entirely true, but this is an example of what the next steps could be if we invested in innovation.

Researchers at Isfahan University of Technology have invented a car which consumes only a liter of gas to drive up to 500 kilometers.

“The single-person car is capable of driving at a maximum speed of 75 kilometers per hour,” Alireza Fadaei, supervisor of the manufacturer group announced.

“The car has a 3.5 horsepower carburetor and is equipped with an injection engine,” he added.

“Composite materials with fiber-carbon, which form the body of the car, give it low weight and high strength,” the supervisor of the group claims.

The Iranian car, which is scheduled to be exhibited in France's Low Consuming Exhibit in Nogaro, aims to replace motorcycles.

It could replace cars, too. And we could encourage smarter growth and more mass transit and higher efficiency instead of spending time and effort finding out if OPEC is undercutting you on the price. Guess what - they are. They probably always have been. But that tiny amount of extra cash isn't going to do anything to solve long-term energy needs or fight global warming. The Congress is fighting the last war and trying to save their political skins from angry drivers. But this is useless policy.

Ignorant Or Calculating?

At least the latest Clinton pander - her vow to break up the OPEC cartel- has some manner of logical sense in that I can't see anyone in the US being against that if they thought it could actually happen, which, um, it can't. But Yglesias and others are right - the price of gas is not rising because of a cartel, it's rising because global demand is skyrocketing, particularly in China and India, and as demand rises, the price rises. I really don't think there's a whole lot of extra supply out there that oil-producing nations aren't pumping - at $120 a barrel they'd be idiots not to get as much out of the ground as possible.

I'm fairly certain that Clinton knows this, as do most politicians who are afraid of telling the truth to cash-strapped American consumers. But Clinton, at least, isn't really interested in reality, she's interested in using the issue as a blunt instrument to show voters that she's "on their side" and Obama's some elitist fruitcake.

On a related note, Lambert Strether has lost his mind. But in his defense, it made for one of the better Sadly, No posts ever.

Look, forget about the usefulness or uselessness of the gas tax holiday for a moment. Put aside the fact that Obama, unlike Clinton and McCain, is clearly in cahoots with Chevron executives to hoard all the extra ketchup packets that could be feeding working families throughout the Rust Belt for decades to come. Is it not abundantly clear that both Democrats’ plans for phased troop withdrawals from Iraq will save taxpayers orders-of-magnitude more Ramen packets than thirty bucks’ worth? Important as it is to keep the noodle-wolf at bay, is this not the issue upon which we should be judging these candidates?

Indeed.

UPDATE: I could also mention that a gas tax holiday would cost millions of dollars and thousands of highway construction jobs, and that past experience with gas tax holidays suggest that the savings are not passed on to the consumer, but I won't. Oh wait, I just did!