Welcome to the Midnight Oil. This diary is open for discussion from a few minutes after midnight through a few minute before (maybe two days later, maybe three). The intro remains the same, but the body is always changing.
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Populist movements don't build themselves, they grow from a process of people learning how to support a series of populist campaigns in a populist way, rather than as passive consumers of corporate political marketing campaigns.
It doesn't matter what the "horse race" outcome of the campaign is, if we fight the campaign. Fighting it, we learn how to fight. Learning how to fight political battles, we become citizens again. Becoming citizens again, we reclaim the Republic that lies dormant beneath the bread and circuses of modern American society.
You are allowed ... encouraged ... to say something days after the Oil is lit ... I come by to add "Spreading Fires" all week long, so you will not be ignored if you post something long after the Midnight Oil has dropped off the recent diary list
Open Thread rules apply to the comments ... follow the topic of the comment you are answering, a main comment can be on anything of interest to the patrons of the Midnight Oil Bar
Don't worry about "jumping the tip jar" ... just go ahead and post
The key factoid to be used here is the National Petroleum Reserve. 9.1b barrels of oil. As much or more than ANWR (h/t psychbob).
The sharp edge of the ax is the fact that everyone who is persuadable hates oil companies and their bloated profits.
The tie is simple: "9.1b barrels of barrels of the National Petroleum Reserve. As much or more than ANWR. So why do the Oil Companies want ANWR? Is it because they want the price of oil and gas to go down? Why would they want that?
Its because its cheaper to drill in ANWR, so it will give them more profits from the same amount of oil.
Giving the Hatchet a Twist
Once you land the hatchet, you got to give it a twist to make a maximum amount of split in the log before going for another swing.
"Why do you think McCain picked the Governor of Alaska? People in Alaska get royalty checks that go up when the price of oil goes up. They'll get bigger royalty checks from ANWR than from the National Petroleum Reserve. Hell, she's married to a guy who has a lucrative job working for an Alaskan oil company.
Flip-flopping on offshore drilling was McCain telling the Oil Companies that he would do their bidding and give them bigger profits. And picking Palin was crossing his fingers and swearing, even if he died in office, the gravy train would continue."
OK, now, write that up in your own words, put it in a text file, and hit the newspaper sites on every article about McCain or Palin that has right wingnuts jumping up and down and shouting rah rah.
Then come back and leave a link to the site where you did it, and someone else can go there and write the same basic thing except in their own words.
Hit and run, hit and run, hit and run.
This drill in Breaking the Silicon Cage is guerrilla war. The right wing figured out after 2006 that fewer people were coming to their blogs because, really, their blogs are less interesting, with so many people repeating off of such a limited range of talking point sheets. And so they decided to go and take over the online comment threads of newspaper sites.
But ... the McCain campaign has two economic policies, and they are both Bush policies ... tax cuts for the rich and Drill, Drill, Drill. Every person who sees through the Drill, Drill, Drill argument is someone that much more likely to vote for the Democratic ticket ... especially when the economic contraction for the third Quarter is announced the week before the election, on the back of ongoing bad news in the unemployment rate.
"Remember, the McCain of 2000 was against social extremism dominating his party. He was against offshore drilling.
But the modern Republican Party is built on the marriage of Big Oil and social extremism, so he had to flip-flop and start pandering to both of those to get the nomination.
So how could he convince Big Oil and the Social Extremists that he was actually committed to dragging the country into a fight over criminalizing abortion and selling our Energy Future out to Big Oil?
When you look at it from McCain's position, picking a social extremist governor from the state swimming in oil money makes all the sense in the world."
Midnight Oil - Blue Sky Mine ...
But if I work all day at the Blue Sky Mine
(there'll be food on the table tonight)
Still I walk up and down on the Blue Sky Mine
(there'll be pay in your pocket tonight)
The candy store paupers lie to the share holders
They're crossing their fingers they pay the truth makers
The balance sheet is breaking up the sky
So I'm caught at the junction still waiting for medicine
The sweat of my brow keeps on feeding the engine
Hope the crumbs in my pocket can keep me for another night
And if the Blue Sky Mining company won't come to my rescue
If the sugar refining company wont save me
Who's gonna save me?
But if I work all day at the Blue Sky Mine
(there'll be food on the table tonight)
Still I walk up and down on the Blue Sky Mine
(there'll be pay in your pocket tonight)
And some have sailed from a distant shore
And the company takes what the company wants
And nothing's as precious, as a hole in the ground
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Once you land the hatchet, you got to give it a twist to make a maximum amount of split in the log before going for another swing.
