VO: When Bush ran, he promised more drilling would mean lower gas prices. (Bush quote) Gas prices are 3 dollars higher today. And what's McCain's solution? More drilling. (McCain quote) We need a real solution. Not the same tired lines.

Actually, the message needs to be a lot more simple than that. People who watch that could think "Oh no, gas prices went up because we didn't drill! Bush was right!"

Instead, substitute the government's statistics. Drilling in ANWR would reduce oil prices by 75 cents a barrel, ten years from now, assuming that OPEC doesn't throttle supply to compensate.

That's like three cents a gallon for gas. Put that stat on the left-hand side of the screen in black (with a backdrop of a gas pump at $4 a gallon perhaps), on the right-hand side put up the cost of what an accident clean-up would cost in red (overlaid on some picture of a oiled seagull, for instance), then switch to the amount of money that would go directly to the oil companies (picture of oil company HQ), then a rising number "estimating" the cost of lost tourism due to the drills offshore (with a nice Photoshopped illustration of what it would look like). It'd probably be an effective ad to swing the numbers.

You need to get past the impression that the US has gigantic stores of oil that environmentalists are sitting on top of and preventing drilling. In reality, it's that we think we have some, we're pretty sure where, but we need to rip everything up to find it.

Besides, we've got that 2006 "environmentally friendly" oil line break in Alaska to look at instead... and to draw to the lie that there is minimal ecological impact with new drilling.

My mistake. Sorry. I just checked, and you're right. Scratch Exxon Valdez.

However, the rest of the comment stands. :-)

Agreed 100%.

I think the fact that Hillary AND McCain were agreeing was the reason the media took such an interest. That's pretty unique, during a pretty unique time.

But, also, how often is there unanimous economic consent on anything? The Gas Tax plan was bad policy -- but it sure seemed like great politics.

I mean, a promise of lower gas prices, AND the lifting of a tax, AND the Republican standard-bearer, the last Democratic President and the bneck-and-neck running Demcratic Presidential Candidate all pushing the issue against the other candidate, who is an elitist, by the way.

The media coverage had to be big on that -- that's one crazy Jenga tower to see set up. And I never for a second imagined it would fall in Obama's favor.

If there's one thing we definitely should remember from primary season, it's that we should NOT trust the media to do its job. And while I disagree with Jerome on offshore drilling, I do understand that we need to educate people about just how stupid this Bush-McCain proposal is. We need to let the people know that:

1. Offshore oil drilling is impractical, as we won't experience the benefits of higher supply and lower costs for DECADES.

2. Offshore oil drilling destroys our coastal ecosystems and irreparably scars our coastlines forever.

3. Offshore oil drilling is dangerously naive, as we're already running out of oil.

4. Offshore oil drilling is the WRONG way to go as we aim to solve the climate crisis by reducing our carbon footprint, NOT increasing it.

I'd also add that no one should be advocating we sit on this issue.

To the contrary we should fire our political guns on this issue until there's nothing left but molten-lead and pulp. Metaphorically. Because it's a winner -- and could turn Florida blue for quite some time.