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Politics : I Will Continue to Continue, to Pretend.... -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Sully- who wrote (34658)	6/16/2010 2:00:19 PM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 35834

You know an Obama speech is bad when Keith Olbermann trashes it By: David Freddoso Online Opinion Editor 06/15/10 8:32 PM EDT You know that President Obama’s speech was a dud when Keith Olbermann trashes it immediately afterward by saying "it was a great speech if you've been on another planet for the last 57 days." I don't think it was a good speech even if you have been on another planet for the last 57 days. I’m glad to hear that Obama finally has a plan for the Gulf oil spill. I am quite underwhelmed, however, by his recycled (no pun intended) call to solve the problem by making our buildings more energy-efficient. The speech lacked any serious specifics, and it also put Obama on the hook with BP for promising a 90 percent reduction in spillage. But I still wasn’t too bearish on the speech until this line about transitioning the economy to “green energy”: <<< Last year, the House of Representatives acted on these principles by passing a strong and comprehensive energy and climate bill – a bill that finally makes clean energy the profitable kind of energy for America’s businesses. Now, there are costs associated with this transition. And some believe we can’t afford those costs right now. I say we can’t afford not to change how we produce and use energy – because the long-term costs to our economy, our national security, and our environment are far greater. >>> I think that line alone will cost him 4 or 5 percentage points in approval immediately, and ten seats for House Democrats. The last thing people want to hear right now is that we need to make more humongous investments in government programs (costly not only to taxpayers but also to consumers) because we “cannot afford not to.” Why doesn’t he just call for another $1 trillion stimulus package? Read more at the Washington Examiner: washingtonexaminer.com

To: Sully- who wrote (34658)	6/16/2010 2:15:04 PM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 35834

Voters More Critical of Obama, BP For Oil Leak Response Rasmussen Reports Most voters continue to support offshore oil drilling, but they are becoming increasingly critical of how President Obama and the companies connected to the massive oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico are responding to that environmental crisis. The president is scheduled to address the nation about the oil leak disaster in a nationally televised speech this evening. The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey shows that 61% of Likely Voters now give the companies associated with the leak – British Petroleum and Transocean - poor ratings for their response to the ongoing problem. That’s up 20 points from two weeks ago and up 33 points from the beginning of May. Only 11% give the companies’ response good or excellent ratings, down from 23% two weeks ago. In early May, the companies’ response received good or excellent reviews from 29%. Americans' anger towards BP has led to a majority who say they will likely boycott the company's products. Meanwhile, 45% now say the president is doing a poor job handling the incident. That’s up 11 points from two weeks ago and 19 points at the beginning of last month. Thirty percent (30%) give the president good or excellent marks for his handling of the situation, down from 38% two weeks ago. As of early last week, however, unhappiness with the president's handling of the oil leak was not reflected in his job approval ratings in the Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll. Still, the majority of voters (57%) continue to believe offshore oil drilling should be allowed. That’s little changed from the previous survey. But support for drilling is down from 64% in mid-May. Seventy-two percent (72%) supported offshore drilling following the president’s announcement at the end of March that he was lifting the ban on such drilling for the first time in years. He has since put that move on hold after the deepwater oil rig explosion that resulted in the unprecedented oil leak. Twenty-five percent (25%) now oppose offshore drilling, up five points over the past two weeks. Another 18% are undecided..... The survey of 1,000 Likely U.S. Voters was conducted on June 13-14, 2010 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Field work for all Rasmussen Reports surveys is conducted by Pulse Opinion Research, LLC. See methodology. Most voters have consistently supported offshore oil drilling in surveys going back several years. Men remain more supportive than women of such drilling. Republicans are a little less critical than Democrats and voters not affiliated with either major party of the companies’ response to the incident, but they are more critical than other voters of the president’s response. Seventy-two percent (72%) of voters nationwide are at least somewhat concerned that new offshore oil drilling will cause environmental problems. Twenty-seven percent (27%) are not concerned about this problem. These numbers include 39% who are Very Concerned and just four percent (4%) who are Not At All Concerned. The number of voters who are concerned about the environmental impact of new drilling is up slightly from results found in May. The vast majority of voters are still following news of the oil leak closely, with most (56%) who are following Very Closely. Besides the obvious environmental concerns about the massive oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico, most Americans also now worry about how it will impact the economy. A Rasmussen video report shows that 48% of adults are likely to buy a car that runs on something other than gasoline in the next 10 years. .... .

To: Sully- who wrote (34658)	6/16/2010 2:37:32 PM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 35834

Gulf Lawmakers to Obama: It's Time to Lift Ban on Offshore Drilling FOXNews.com Published June 15, 2010 Gulf region lawmakers are demanding an end to the moratorium on offshore oil drilling imposed by the Obama administration, saying the cost to workers' livelihoods exceeds the risk of another spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Louisiana Rep. Charlie Melancon joined several of the region's other congressional members on Tuesday to argue that a six-month moratorium would result in 20,000 lost jobs and the collapse of offshore drilling companies and suppliers, who contribute $6 billion a year to federal coffers. Melancon, a Democrat, along with 19 other Gulf lawmakers, held a press conference Tuesday to demand an end to the moratorium and to advocate for "responsible offshore drilling and continued development of our natural resources." Other representatives present, included Ted Poe, R-Texas; Charles Boustany, R-La.; Robert Aderholt, R-Ala.; Joe Barton, R-Texas and Gregg Harper, R-Miss. The news conference came as members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee convened on Capitol Hill to grill BP and the nation's top oil executives on offshore drilling practices and preparedness in averting an environmental disaster. The hearing also served as a battle ground over the administration's moratorium on deep-water drilling, as three of the five oil executives present said they favored an end to the ban. Two executives, Shell Oil Company President Marvin Odum and BP America Inc. President and Chairman Lamar McKay, were not given an opportunity to answer yes or no. The U.S. government extended a moratorium on deep-water drilling in May by six months following the April 20 explosion at the Deepwater Horizon rig that killed 11 workers and unleashed millions of gallons of crude oil into the Gulf. BP currently has four other offshore oil drilling permits that were put on hold by Obama. But the ban, while supported by the White House and other Democrats, has angered Gulf lawmakers who say it's crippling an already weakened economy in the region. "Thousands of Louisianans are already out of work because of the devastating oil spill, but President Obama says he has a plan for all this job loss -- join the unemployment rolls, and collect a government check," Sen. David Vitter, R-La., wrote in an e-mail to his supporters on Tuesday. "This is totally unacceptable. I will fight to keep every single Louisiana job Obama is putting in jeopardy as a result of this moratorium," Vitter said. And in a letter to the Small Business Administration Tuesday, Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., cited the six-month moratorium as a factor in the Gulf region's economic struggle. White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, meanwhile, backed away from suggestions that the moratorium be lifted, telling Fox News Tuesday that Obama no longer trusts the word of BP in determining whether its deep-water oil drilling is safe in other parts of the Gulf of Mexico. "I don't think the people of the Gulf, even those dependent upon those jobs, or the people of this country, believe that we ought to be letting BP go forward with the drilling process when we're still cleaning up the mess of the last time they tried to drill at a deep-water depth in the Gulf," Gibbs said. Public Polling Policy, a liberal-leaning polling agency, released a poll Tuesday that surveyed how unhappy Louisiana voters are with Obama's handling of the Gulf crisis. Fifty percent of voters in the state -- including 31 percent of Democrats -- said former President George W. Bush handled Hurricane Katrina better than Obama's response to the oil spill crisis. The poll found that 32 percent of Louisiana voters approve of how Obama has addressed the spill, while 62 percent disapprove. The poll, which surveyed 492 Louisiana voters from June 12 to 13, had a sampling error of plus or minus 4.4 percentage points. .

To: Sully- who wrote (34658)	6/16/2010 3:30:31 PM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 35834

A great big gusher of presidential goo Jonah Goldberg - New York Post Posted: 11:56 PM, June 15, 2010 In a peculiar instance of synchronicity, President Obama's Oval Office speech to the nation last night resembled the very calamity it was intended to address: Like the oil spewing into the Gulf, it began as a focused and narrow stream of words -- and quickly spread out into an amorphous cloud of goo. What started as a just-the-facts-ma'am explanation quickly got caught up in political currents -- by the end we were treated to bromides about the Greatest Generation and putting a man on the moon and preposterous insinuations that the Red Chinese will turn Green before us. (China, mind you, is the country where the rivers burn, the air is crunchy and the government is building a new, filthy, coal-fired power plant every 10 days for the next decade). Last night we saw just the latest installment of "Never Let a Crisis Go to Waste," written by Rahm Emanuel and performed by The One. The immediate goal: to create the political climate where BP will bend over and say "thank you sir, may I have another" in perpetuity. Beyond that, to browbeat the public and Congress into accepting some version of cap-and-trade legislation that will export jobs and raise energy prices in the middle of a recession. If we could defeat Hitler, we can hike your utility bills! If we could put a man on the moon, we can put an American manufacturing job in India! Yes, we can! This points to the intractability of the political mess Obama is in. The White House desperately wants to focus on job creation and fiscal responsibility, or at least appear that way. But Obama's agenda incontinently blows in the opposite direction, and every other direction as well. The president spoke movingly about the lost livelihoods of fishermen in the Gulf. "You know, for generations, men and women who call this region home have made their living from the water. That living is now in jeopardy. I've talked to shrimpers and fishermen who don't know how they're going to support their families this year. I've seen empty docks and restaurants with fewer customers . . ." All too true. But what about the tens of thousands more Gulf residents who will see their jobs and customers vanish thanks to Obama's drilling moratorium, which may send offshore rigs to Africa for years to come? People have been working in those fields for generations, too. Obama, in a now tiredly familiar attempt to blame the government's failures on the Bush administration, insisted last night that the government won't see oil companies as a "partner" anymore. I'm all for breaking the clinch between big government and big business -- but is Barack Obama, the de facto CEO of two car companies and an insurance firm, really the one to be tut-tutting such incestuousness? Never mind the irony that BP was one of the original boosters of cap-and-trade, what to make of his rousing defense of the energy legislation passed by the House? Huzzah, quoth Obama, it "makes clean energy the profitable kind of energy for America's businesses." Translation: Government will subsidize the likes of GE and Archer Daniels Midland to produce energy in ways that aren't profitable in the market. The "profits" will all come from the taxpayer. Every calamity, according to the president, proves that his prepackaged campaign agenda is exactly what America needs to fix things. He somehow managed to convince a lot of people that we needed to overhaul health care in order to deal with the financial crisis. Now he wants us to believe that switching to a "green economy" will somehow ensure that we won't have environmental disasters like this anymore. This is, quite simply, absurd. And it's also sad. The Obama presidency itself is becoming diffuse and amorphous -- because it is becoming clear the president is in over his head. He admitted last night that he has no clue how we'll switch from fossil fuels to the new clean-energy nirvana. He conceded we don't "what that looks like" and we don't "know how to get there." All he knows how to do is to keep talking. .

To: Sully- who wrote (34658)	6/18/2010 3:55:13 AM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 35834

A Massive Diversion? By: Rich Lowry The Corner I could be wrong, but I have the feeling President Obama has been sucked into a massive diversion with the oil spill. There's not much he can do about it, and I'm guessing most people actually don't care about it as much as they say. Yes, they feel sorry for the poor people in the Gulf and they disapprove of the government response, but at the end of the day the spill still doesn't directly affect their lives. This probably accounts for the disconnect between all the sky-is-falling punditry about the crisis in Obama's leadership and his basically steady poll numbers. But Obama has let himself get pushed around by the media and the left, which are obsessed with the story. So, first he shows his "kick ass" anger, then gives a prime-time speech that can't possibly fulfill his supporters' expectations because their expectations are so unreasonable. What is he going to say that's going to make this situation any better? How specific can he be about our post-oil future, given how airy it is? How concrete can he be about energy legislation, when he doesn't have the votes for cap-and-trade? I can't help feeling we're seeing a psychodrama involving the Left's "tragedy of disappointment" with Obama play out in real time on MSNBC and the op-ed pages of the New York Times. It's all a little childish, but it's not as though Obama didn't spend a couple of years feeding the grandeur of their delusions. .

To: Sully- who wrote (34658)	6/23/2010 9:54:09 PM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 35834

Barack Obama, Dreamer in Chief By: Charles Krauthammer National Review Online Pres. Barack Obama doesn’t do the mundane. He was sent to us to do larger things. You could see that plainly in his Oval Office address on the Gulf oil spill. He could barely get himself through the pedestrian first half: a bit of BP-bashing, a bit of faux-Clintonian “I feel your pain,” a bit of recovery and economic-mitigation accounting. It wasn’t until the end of the speech -- the let-no-crisis-go-to-waste part that tried to leverage the Gulf Coast devastation to advance his cap-and-trade climate-change agenda -- that Obama warmed to his task. Pedestrian is beneath Obama. Mr. Fix-It he is not. He is world-historical, the visionary, come to make the oceans recede and the planet heal. How? By creating a glorious, new clean-green economy. And how exactly to do that? From Washington, by presidential command, and with tens of billions of dollars thrown around. With the liberal (and professorial) conceit that scientific breakthroughs can be legislated into existence, Obama proposes to give us a new industrial economy. But is this not what we’ve been trying to do for decades with ethanol -- which remains a monumental boondoggle, economically unviable and environmentally damaging to boot -- as with yesterday’s panacea, synfuels, into which Jimmy Carter poured billions? Notice that Obama no longer talks about Spain, which until recently he repeatedly cited for its visionary subsidies of a blossoming new clean-energy industry. That’s because Spain, now on the verge of bankruptcy, is pledged to reverse its disastrously bloated public spending, including radical cuts in subsidies to its uneconomical photovoltaic industry. There’s a reason petroleum is such a durable fuel. It’s not, as Obama fatuously suggested, because of oil-company lobbying, but because it is very portable, energy-dense, and easy to use. But this doesn’t stop Obama from thinking that he can mandate a superior substitute into being. His argument: Well, if we can put a man on the moon, why not this? Aside from the irony that this most tiresome of clichés comes from a president who is canceling our program to return to the moon, it is utterly meaningless. The wars on cancer and on poverty have been similarly sold. They remain unwon. Why? Because we knew how to land on the moon. We had the physics to do it. Cancer cells, on the other hand, are far more complex than the Newtonian equations that govern a moon landing. Equally daunting are the laws of social interaction -- even assuming there are any -- that sustain a culture of poverty. Similarly, we don’t know how to make renewables that match the efficiency of fossil fuels. In the interim, it is Obama and his Democratic allies who, as they dream of such scientific leaps, are unwilling to use existing technologies to reduce our dependence on foreign (i.e., imported) and risky (i.e., deepwater) sources of oil -- twin dependencies that Obama decried in Tuesday’s speech. “Part of the reason oil companies are drilling a mile beneath the surface of the ocean,” said Obama, is “because we’re running out of places to drill on land and in shallow water.” Running out of places on land? What about the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge or the less-known National Petroleum Reserve -- 23 million acres of Alaska’s North Slope, near the existing pipeline and designated nearly a century ago for petroleum development -- that have been shut down by the federal government? Running out of shallow-water sources? How about the Pacific Ocean, a not-inconsiderable body of water, and its vast U.S. coastline? That’s been off-limits to new drilling for three decades. We haven’t run out of safer and more easily accessible sources of oil. We’ve been run off them by environmentalists. They prefer to dream green instead. Obama is dreamer in chief: He wants to take us to this green future “even if we’re unsure exactly what that looks like. Even if we don’t yet precisely know how we’re going to get there.” Here’s the offer: Tax carbon, spend trillions, and put government in control of the energy economy -- and he will take you he knows not where, by way of a road he knows not which. That’s why Tuesday’s speech was received with such consternation. It was so untethered from reality. The Gulf is gushing, and the president is talking mystery roads to unknown destinations. That passes for vision, and vision is Obama’s thing. It sure beats cleaning up beaches. -- Charles Krauthammer is a nationally syndicated columnist. © 2010, The Washington Post Writers Group. .

To: Sully- who wrote (34658)	6/25/2010 12:22:18 AM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 35834

Another Inconvenient Truth Chip Bok from Creators Syndicate creators.com

To: Sully- who wrote (34658)	6/25/2010 2:12:01 AM
From: Sully-	1 Recommendation Respond to of 35834

Do You Know Where Your Leaders Are? Michael Ramirez from Creators Syndicate creators.com

To: Sully- who wrote (34658)	6/29/2010 4:23:19 AM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 35834

Gov't Isn't the Answer for Everything Chip Bok from Creators Syndicate creators.com

To: Sully- who wrote (34658)	7/1/2010 7:06:52 AM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 35834

Enough About the Crisis, We Need to Move to the Exploitation By: Jonah Goldberg The Corner In case you missed it, good stuff from Chris Horner (as usual): <<< First, let’s recall that Rahm Emanuel is best understood in context: “Never let a serious crisis go to waste. What I mean by that is, it’s an opportunity to do things you couldn’t do before.” Second, today Roll Call reports (subscription required) that during today’s White House meeting — called by the president to try and advance his global-warming agenda by using the Gulf spill as the tail to wag that otherwise dead dog — Obama accused Tennessee senator Lamar Alexander of raising a “talking point” by seeking to discuss response measures the government might employ in the Gulf, and went on to say that the oil spill was not the topic of the meeting. Remember, the point of the meeting was supposed to be how to pass a spill-response bill, though the substance was revealed to be how to use the Gulf spill to pass a global-warming bill calling it a spill-response bill. >>> .

To: Sully- who wrote (34658)	7/7/2010 3:03:24 AM
From: Sully-	1 Recommendation Respond to of 35834

Jindal's actions draw support from big majority in national survey By: Mark Tapscott Editorial Page Editor 07/06/10 4:36 PM EDT Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal's decision to move unilaterally to save his state's beaches and marshes from the Gulf Oil Spill is drawing impressive support in a new Zogby International poll of more than 2,000 likely voters conducted at the end of June for the O'Leary Report. The survey asked respondents this question: <<< "Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal ordered the Louisiana National Guard and his own state government to take action to protect the state’s coastline eight weeks after the gulf spill started, even though some operations would take place in federal waters. The federal government stepped in to try to stop Jindal’s efforts because they were not coordinated with the federal response. Do you agree with Jindal acting unilaterally, or should he have waited for federal authorities?" >>> Sixty five percent of the respondents sided with Jindal, compared to 21 percent who said he should have waited for the federal government to act first. Support for Jindal was even more pronounced among independents at 70 percent, with only 15 percent saying he should have waited. A somewhat less impressive majority, 61 percent, of young voters aged 18-29 supported Jindal, with a quarter saying he should have delayed his response. O'Leary also notes that "a sizeable 68% of voters who had to pay taxes last year agree with Jindal acting unilaterally, as do 54% of voters who did not have any tax liability last year (due to either low income or numerous tax deductions)." You can view the crosstabs here. Read more at the Washington Examiner: washingtonexaminer.com

To: Sully- who wrote (34658)	7/11/2010 9:09:47 AM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 35834

Obama Finalizes Plans For 3rd Vacation Since Gulf Oil Spill Crisis Began Posted by Jim Hoft July 10, 2010, 3:59 PM <<< “I’m not going to rest or be satisfied until the leak is stopped at the source, the oil in the Gulf is contained and cleaned up, and the people in the Gulf are able to go back to their lives and their livelihoods.” >>> Barack Obama May 14, 2010 Speaking On the Gulf Oil Spill Disaster YouTube: Obama: "I Won't Rest Until Leak Is Stopped" (Except for Parties, Golf, Ball Games, etc.) Barack Obama finalized plans this week for his third vacation since the Gulf oil spill and explosion back on April 20, 2010… 81 Days ago. .

To: Sully- who wrote (34658)	7/16/2010 8:43:56 AM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 35834

The Obama Way Chip Bok from Creators Syndicate creators.com

To: Sully- who wrote (34658)	7/27/2010 12:04:03 PM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 35834

BREAKING: FOX is reporting there is a new oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico unrelated to the BP spill. more to follow....

To: Sully- who wrote (34658)	7/27/2010 2:35:43 PM
From: Sully-	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 35834

New Gulf Problem: Where'd the Oil Go? Greg Pollowitz Planet Gore ABC News reports: <<< For 86 days, oil spewed into the Gulf of Mexico from BP's damaged well, dumping some 200 million gallons of crude into sensitive ecosystems. BP and the federal government have amassed an army to clean the oil up, but there's one problem -- they're having trouble finding it. At its peak last month, the oil slick was the size of Kansas, but it has been rapidly shrinking, now down to the size of New Hampshire. Today, ABC News surveyed a marsh area and found none, and even on a flight out to the rig site Sunday with the Coast Guard, there was no oil to be seen. "That oil is somewhere. It didn't just disappear," said Plaquemines Parish President Billy Nungesser. Salvador Cepriano is one of the men searching for crude. Cepriano, a shrimper, has been laying out boom with his boat, but he's found that there's no oil to catch. "I think it is underneath the water. It's in between the bottom and the top of the water," Cepriano said. Even the federal government admits that locating the oil has become a problem. "It is becoming a very elusive bunch of oil for us to find," said National Incident Cmdr. Thad Allen. >>> The rest here. .

To: Sully- who wrote (34658)	8/16/2010 3:55:23 PM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 35834

Obama fakes a swim in the Gulf Don Surber blog From the White House: <<< “President Barack Obama and daughter Sasha swim at Alligator Point in Panama City Beach, Fla., Saturday, Aug.14, 2010. The President traveled to Panama City Beach with First Lady Michelle Obama and Sasha to meet with local business owners and officials and to encourage Americans to travel to the Gulf Coast beaches. August 14, 2010. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza).” >>> Gee, the president is swimming in the Gulf, right? Not so fast. From the Independent: <<< “The official picture was intended to provide evidence that the region’s beaches are back to normal. Yet it soon emerged that the private beach on which it was taken, off Alligator Point in St Andrew Bay, northwest Florida, isn’t technically in the gulf.” >>> Sometimes I think our moral and intellectual superiors in the White House just do this sort of thing out of disdain for the American people. If you are going to swim in the Gulf — swim in the Gulf and not some place next to it. .

To: Sully- who wrote (34658)	8/21/2010 4:11:41 AM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 35834

Issa: White House fibbed on Gulf cleanup progress By: David Freddoso Online Opinion Editor 08/19/10 5:00 PM EDT Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., says the White House released an unjustifiably rosy report on the progress of the Gulf cleanup, and falsely claimed that it had already been peer-reviewed. From his office: <<< A NOAA scientist, Dr. Bill Lehr, yesterday told a group of Congressional staff investigators on a conference call that a controversial National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) report claiming that nearly three-quarters of the oil from the Gulf oil spill has already been addressed was released by White House officials and not scientists at NOAA. The NOAA scientist told congressional investigators that the data backing up the assertions made in the report is still unavailable and that peer review of the report is still not complete. Officials at an August 4 White House press briefing had said that the report had been thoroughly peer reviewed. >>> Good thing we finally have an administration that puts science in its rightful place. Issa’s comment: <<< “This is yet another in a long line of examples where the White House’s pre-occupation with the public relations of the oil spill has superseded the realities on the ground. >>> Read more at the Washington Examiner: washingtonexaminer.com

To: Sully- who wrote (34658)	8/21/2010 4:39:22 AM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 35834

Obama's moratorium was just initally just for deep water rigs, but now shallow water drillers worry about bankruptcy? By: Mark Tapscott Editorial Page Editor 08/20/10 3:45 PM EDT President Obama's "temporary" drilling moratorium implemented in the wake of the BP oil spill disaster in the Gulf of Mexico is having devastating effects throughout the region's energy industry even though the regulation originally was only aimed at rigs operating in deep water. The Houson Chronicle reports that 14 of 46 shallow water rigs drilling rigs aka "jackups" are now idle thanks to delays in Department of Interior processing of drilling permit applications. "So far, permitting delays have idled 14 of the 46 available jackups in the Gulf and forced offshore companies to cut several hundred jobs," reported the Chronicle's Brett Clanton. "Each rig employs about 100 workers and supports many additional indirect jobs at supply boat companies, oil field services companies and other businesses," Clanton said. "If the situation doesn't change, 25 rigs will be idle by the end of August and 30 by the end of September as existing permits expire, according to figures provided by the Shallow Water Energy Security Coalition, an industry group formed in May to call attention to the issue, he said." Two deepwater rigs have recently been contracted away from work in the Gulf to projects elsewhere in the world for foreign firms. You can read the rest of Clanton's report here. The Gulf drilling moratorium is projected by Lousiana State University Prof. Joseph Mason to be likely to result in more than 8,000 lost jobs, representing some $500 million in wages. HT: In The Pipeline, American Energy Alliance washingtonexaminer.com