Monday, June 23, 2008

Obama In the Pocket of Big Ethanol?

At least this article seems to think so.

On the campaign trail, Mr. Obama has not explained his opposition to imported sugar cane ethanol. But in remarks last year, made as President Bush was about to sign an ethanol cooperation agreement with his Brazilian counterpart, Mr. Obama argued that “our country’s drive toward energy independence” could suffer if Mr. Bush relaxed restrictions, as Mr. McCain now proposes.

“It does not serve our national and economic security to replace imported oil with Brazilian ethanol,” he argued.

This is another statement that shows that Obama is wet behind the ears. Brazil is not Iran by any stretch of the imagination. It seems much better to fill our tanks with Ethanol from a fairly stable allied country like Brazil rather than oil from a country like Iran who is our sworn enemy. Moral relativism is strong in Obama?

Also increasing the ethanol imports from Brazil helps their economy so that more Brazilians could afford to get out of poverty. I thought the Dems were all about increasing the lot in life of downtrodden foreign peoples. At least the JFK Dems seemed to be into that. I guess flying around in Archer Daniels Midland's private jets is just too good for Obama to pass up.

Finally, sugar-cane ethanol is just better stuff then corn ethanol. It gives us 8 to 1 energy output/input ratio rather then the 2 to 1 energy that corn does. Plus, people don't rely on sugar as a staple as much as they do corn. So we could use our own US grown corn to make ethanol plus add the Brazilian sugar ethanol to the mix and reduce the amount of foreign oil by that much more. Protectionism like Obama advocates will make it even harder for us to ween ourselves off of foreign oil. I guess his pals in Big Ethanol will thank him even more.

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