Offshore Drilling

The Daily Show made a good point tonight about the offshore drilling debate. Unfortunately, its hard to retain all of the necessary information to not sound like an uninformed idiot if you were to somehow decide to bring this up in conversation. Luckily, if you read this summary you will be able to remember everything you need to know to fully impress your overly pedantic (mainly for using words like this - you can't use it without being one... what a word) uncle at the next family get together.

The issue is over offshore drilling. The House of Reps voted to expand it, but only in areas at least 50 miles away from the shore. I'm not really sure why it has to be so far away. I'm not really sure why we are going to waste our time and resources with this at all. But anyway, it seems that a number of republicans are very unhappy about this 50 miles and out decision. They say that 88% of the oil we can effectively extract is within 50 miles. Here's where it gets messy. We are told that these republicans are getting this statistic from the Interior Department of the Minerals Management Service. So whats wrong with that? This is the same group of people that just made the headlines when it was exposed that some of them had partied, slept with and accepted gifts from the energy companies that have a huge interest in offshore drilling. Should we really trust them right now? Is it possible that the statistic being used over and over while debating a huge important issue in today's politics might not be true? (There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics). Does anybody else think that regardless of its veracity, simply using statistics like these is a bad way to decide on politics? Aren't there things like morals and common sense and bigger pictures that should take importance over these things? I mean come on. Seriously...

Seriously...

After less than five minutes in front of a tv with FoxNews' very own Hannity, Colmes and guests, I realized that I should never do that again without a proper outlet, and thus Serious Politics was born.

What I saw tonight was a bunch of grown men arguing about whether Obama was losing his edge and thus his chances at presidency by using a teleprompter for speeches. Seriously? I'm not even going to bother debating the opinions these grown men shared. It's pointless. Do you want to know why? When you are the democratic nominee for president 2 months out from the election, life can get a little busier than it used to be. You might not always have time to memorize every speech that you give these days... so you might use a teleprompter. This is not news. This is silly. I mean come on. Seriously...