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Middle East and terrorism, occasional political and Jewish issues Ping List. High Volume If you’d like to be on or off, please FR mail me.

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400,000 or 500,000? Don't insert tripwires if you're not willing to back up the implied threat. And no, I don't think Poland is at imminent risk. And yes, a NATO ally, we are obligated by law to assist. Better to send the Poles the defense systems we promised.

Am I the only one who thinks, for our own security, we should undertake a major drilling program here in the US. And for export. Accerlerate the approval of the couple dozen unapproved applications for LNG export terminals. Not one every couple years, all of them. And if oil prices are depressed, and if Russia is harmed financially, those are only consequences of America following policies that benefit America. If lower prices benefit Europe and harm Russia, it's irrelevant. Lower prices and jobs benefit America.

Am I the only one who thinks, for our own security, we should undertake a major drilling program here in the US. And for export.

My take: Yes and no. The more we could supply ourselves, the better--but it's also a global market. Sucking out US resources to inefficiently send them far away is a long term loser. Moreover, the price of oil is determined by global supply--being a marginal supplier isn't going to change that. So, I think we should develop lots of produceible resources, but not drain them in a hurry.

Absolutely - we could be selling oil to the Europeans, who are now under Putin’s thumb and dependent on him for oil.

it’s DUH - not to DUH-Bama, of course.

I agree with you that the only truly effective way to get out of the mess we're in is to produce something. Our breakthroughs in energy should be the way forward. We could increase employment, wealth, and revenue while lowering domestic and international energy costs. Money now spent on energy could be transferred to other needs. We could lessen the dependency on government with more people working in the private sector. As a consequence of that production, we could lower energy costs worldwide benefiting the poorest people the most.

And by lowering energy costs worldwide we could deny Russia the financial resources that provide its ability to restore Putin's Soviet/Russian empire. Not only would Russia lose a great deal of the financial resources derived from energy sales, but other nations wanting to remain free and independent of Russia would not be dependent on Russia for their energy. And those nations wanting to remain outside Putin's control would have more money to spend on their own defense since they'd be spending less on Russian energy.

The benefits to the USA and others are so great that it's obvious that Obama won't support the expansion of US energy production.