Steve Scalise is holding a meeting at the SHELL GAS STATION in Metairie. Haa!... oh, what a perfect pair.
Stevie-Boy is going to solve America's Oil problem!... (giggling over here) .. the answer is "all right here off LA.'s coastline"... (Right where we've been the whole time).. "billions of barrels"... "we could be completely independent of the Middle East oil" right away. (our hero)
"MR. DUMAS" award goes to Steve Scalise.
"All we have to do is drill in Anwar..." Scalise says. Duh- All the experts agree, all together, every bit of Anwar oil would be a drop in the bucket of America's Energy problem.. and, then what, Stevie?
Oh, "we have billions of barrels of oil on the other side of the Continental shelf off the Coast of LA" .... We do? Then Louisiana is the new Saudi Arabia? (what is he smoking?.. His ego has gone NUTS.)
(While I do not recall fondly the high gas prices I paid working for the Lamont for Senate campaign in '06 in CT, I am unsure if drilling is the only answer. I realize it may be part of the answer, but we also need to do more than just drill ... such mandating higher gas mileage (40 mpg minimum by 2010) from Detroit automakers, investing in alternative energy sources (such as solar, wind, and biofuels), among others. I do not believe that nuclear power is the answer, as we will have to deal with radioactive waste, and where to store it. That's a headache I'd rather not argue over. - promoted by ryan)
Has America become so homogenized that we are thinking more alike regardless of what part of the country we come from? We all get the same evening news, the same TV shows, and the same radio talking heads telling us what, in their opinion, our opinion should be. Are Louisiana's interests and priorities along the same track as those expressed by locals along the east coast? I decided to take a look ...
I make it a habit of taking a road trip somewhere around the country every few months, to get a sense of outside perspectives on Louisiana, and what we do or do not have in common with other parts of the country. In New York, Connecticut and Massachusetts this week, I found the same issues on the front burner that concern many Louisianians, but often different opinions.
Katrina and Rita were catastrophes that have faded from memory, and are stories for the history books for most of these easterners. They had "moved on" from any major concern a long time ago. This might well be as much a reflection on Louisiana leaders who failed to develop a major public relations effort to keep the hurricane protection problem on the front burner.
This is something that has been brewing on my mind for the last few weeks, as I have spoken with folks about Louisiana politics, and the fact that the Democratic Party has pretty much had a stranglehold on the State Legislature for the past 40 + years.
Many Republicans say it is time to give their party a chance to run Louisiana, mainly because the State Legislature has been run by the Democrats for all of that time, and we still rank near the bottom in darn near every category we don't want to rank near the bottom in.
To paraphrase my father ... if bullshit were energy, the folks making that argument would be bigger than Entergy. Simply put, that dog don't hunt.
