Old Man McCain is Getting on my Nerves

As this political season heats up, I am yet again disgusted by how plain-stupid the average person seems to be.

Case in point - Oil. As the price of oil increases, the political debate in this country seems to be shifting from the substantive discussion of "how do we reduce oil consumption," to the lame discussion of "how can we make prices go down right now?"

John McCain's answer to this problem is in-part to legalize 'offshore oil drilling' in places the government has previously placed off-limits.

Offshore oil drilling is now being discussed as if it means anything... It doesn't. For starters, even if the ban were to be lifted tomorrow, it would take AT LEAST five years for any of the new offshore wells to become operational. That's right, we literally would not see an increase in domestic production for at least 5 years; roughly 2013.

Additionally, even if we went gangbusters in our offshore drilling, and set up a rig off of every coast from California to Florida, by the time every single one of these derricks became operational, in 2013 - mind you, the US Government's own study projects that full-on offshore domestic drilling would result in increased output of between 400,000 - 1,000,000 barrels a day. 500,000 barrels of oil per day is equivalent to increasing global supply of oil by .5%.

The economics of the oil industry dictates that an increase in global oil production of .5% equals a price reduction of 1.5%. In other words, if gasoline sells for $4 per gallon, a .5% increase in oil production would only lower the price of gas by 6 cents per-gallon. So, after five years the most we would possibly see from offshore oil drilling in the United States is gasoline move from $4.00 per gallon to $3.94 per gallon. That is blatantly nonsensical, it shouldn't even be discussed... yet here we are, with McCain advocating this nonsense.

So what does this all mean? Basically it means that Americans are dopes. It is an interesting problem in American society, we have a very lazy and uneducated populace when it comes to civic and political awareness. It saddens me, because instead of political campaigns being about meaningful issues, everything gets reduced to lame slogans and dopey proposals; such as offshore oil drilling.