Both Sen. Obama and Sen. McCain spoke about energy yesterday. The major networks covered them both. Sen. Obama did mention biofuels, clean coal, and safe nuclear as part of his solution. Ok, but how is he going to do it? How is he going to get the mining out of coal, the radiation out of nuclear, the food out of biofuels? What about the transportation required to implement these ideas? He didn’t go into that. But, the way he said it, he preserved some deniability. He can always say that coal turned out not to be clean, and nuclear not to be safe, etc. But, one has to wonder whether or not at this point in time, a majority of the American people don’t just want to hear the down and dirty truth right now and not more political slight of hand? But apparently Sen. Obama and his people think it is necessary. But I’m not sure it is the change that people are hungry for.

Sen. Obama got himself into trouble on the nuclear issue in the Nevada debate. The people of Nevada do not want Illinois’ high level nuclear waste, but Illinois is the most dependant on nuclear power state. We have lots of that high level waste, and a lot of it is stored not too far from where lots of people are. He can’t serve two masters here. He has to either get behind the nuclear energy call, or say that we need to get away from it. There’s no “safe” nuclear anywhere on the drawing board that I am aware of. If there are ideas for it, then bring them on.

The thing that is kind of disappointing about Sen. Obama’s talk is that (and I admit I haven’t read the entire text yet, but in terms of what the national media is covering) he didn’t talk about how we need to decentralize the electrical production. When you talk about nuclear and coal, you are talking about maintaining the existing centralized grid. Sen. Obama should at least be discussing the issue of decentralization.

However, the fact that Gore endorsed him and Sen. Obama said that he was going to be consulting with Gore on energy policy did go a ways with me. One of Gore’s big ideas is the decentralization of the electrical generation. If we did that, we would eliminate so much of our dependency on foreign oil. Hopefully Sen. Obama is listening.

Sen. McCain said a lot of the same things as Sen. Obama in terms of “alternative energy” and coal and nuclear. He’s more gungho than Sen. Obama on nuclear. He also wants to open up the offshore areas for drilling. But what he isn’t telling the people is that the increase in the demand worldwide so far outstrips the ability to increase production to meet the demand, regardless of where we drill, that, under the classic “supply and demand” model, prices are going to continue to rise.

I was interested by an article that came across my email yesterday evening about how the polls, exit polls, and other interesting election oddities, kept coming out in favor of Sen. Clinton. http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0806/S00182.htm
I wrote earlier in the year about the New Hampshire primary. There were questions that were raised and not answered in that primary about discrepancies between polls and results. I think it’s worth noting.

The premise of the article, I think, is that Karl Rove and his buddies played mischief with the Democratic primaries to stop Obama from gaining tremendous momentum and to create dissention within the Democratic party. Could be. The thing that gets me is that the media is still relying on the same exit poll methodology that all of a sudden failed in the Bush - Kerry race, and yet no explanation at all about that. Either they aren’t reliable or they are. If they keep relying on them, except for the Kerry case, then the Kerry case is an exception that needs to be looked at. But the mainstream media covered that up. That’s my beef. It’s one or the other - it can’t be both.