good/evening&good/night: oh nancy

i officially declare that i believe our (well, she's not my speaker) Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, to be profoundly stupid. profoundly profoundly stupid.

Speaker Pelosi's Unnatural Gaffe

By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY Posted Tuesday, August 26, 2008 4:20 PM PT
Energy Policy: The speaker of the House touts natural gas as an "alternative fuel like wind." Could it be that this time she's put her money where her mouth is?

Somewhere in the universe there may be a planet where natural gas is considered an alternative form of energy, but on this one it's still considered a fossil fuel.
Yes, it's clean-burning — "the cleanest of all fossil fuels," as the Natural Gas Supply Organization puts it. But it's still a fossil fuel formed deep within the earth, like its coal and petroleum cousins, by extreme pressure and heat.
Speaker Pelosi, who has taken a lot of heat and pressure herself for leading this "drill nothing" Congress, talked on Sunday's "Meet The Press" about an energy policy as incoherent as that of her party's presidential candidate, Barack Obama.
"I believe in natural gas as a clean, cheap alternative to fossil fuels," she said at one point. Natural gas "is cheap, abundant and clean compared to fossil fuels," she said at another.
She may be forgiven for her confusion. It's hard to be Speaker, dictate U.S. energy policy and manage your energy investments all at the same time.
Moderator Tom Brokaw asked about her investments in "clean" energies such as wind and natural gas as she tries to block the development of additional resources of competing energy such as petroleum. She said she and her husband have between $50,000 and $100,000 invested in T. Boone Pickens' Clean Energy Fuels.
"But, that is — that is the marketplace," she replied, explaining that the market is so big her meager investment was trivial and irrelevant. "That's not the point," she said. "I'm investing in something I believe in." Oh. And here we thought investments were made on the expectation of profit.
The fact is, as syndicated columnist Michelle Malkin reports, the Speaker's 2007 financial disclosure form Schedule III lists "Assets and Unearned Income" of between $101,000 and $250,000 from Clean Energy Fuels Corp. (CLNE) Public Common Stock. All on the expectation of, uh, windfall profits?
Federal lands, according to the American Petroleum Institute, hold 651 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, enough to fuel 60 million households for 160 years. Some 420 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, according to the U.S. Minerals Management Service, can be found in the Outer Continental Shelf.
According to a new report by Navigant Consulting, there could be as much as 842 trillion cubic feet of retrievable natural gas in shale formations around the country, formations estimated to contain as much as two trillion barrels of crude — seven times Saudi Arabia's known reserves.
Domestic natural gas production was up 8.8% the first five months of this year compared with last. Most of the gain came from shale, particularly the Barnett Shale formation near Fort Worth, Texas.
Barnett is the first shale field to be developed, and gas production has increased 10 times since 2001. This field now accounts for 7% of domestic natural gas production, and there's much more to be had — if Pelosi and friends allow it.
So why is Pelosi blocking the opening up of these areas? Isn't it a tad schizophrenic to block exploration for an energy source you tout at the same time?
The answer may be that oil and natural gas are usually found in the same place at the same time. Such was the case at Prudhoe Bay, just 60 miles west of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, where Pelosi and her Democratic friends block drilling for either.
It's worth noting that in Colorado, home to the Democratic National Party Convention, producing natural gas is big business. In 2006, more than $7 billion worth was produced from over 20,000 wells with nary a windmill in sight.
We're not against true alternative forms of energy. We're all for American forms of energy and believe we should produce as much as we can everywhere we can in all forms. Then all the American people, and not just Nancy Pelosi, can profit.