There are 40,000 Republicans of the 130,000 teachers among the Florida Education Association (FEA). I am one of those Republicans and I depart from by bretheren on SB 6. It’s a bad bill. It’s wrong on substance, intent and implementation.

With the respect to the later, there is no implementation in place. GOP attempts to cry “misinformation” and “lying” are sickeningly similar to Democrat assertions regarding Obamacare, but the muscle behind both is the same. They are both driven by false narratives, facts and choices.

Crist signaled some time ago that he would sign the bill and people like Jim Thrasher have been taunting him publically of that stance. But Crist has yet to sign the bill and has until Friday to do so – or to veto it.

Quite frankly, my party has long gotten education wrong as they have seen any associative legislation as a blood fued with unions. I have no idea whay the Florida GOP congress has decided to shove such a plan down the throats of all Floridians as they are currently doing. Perhaps in their arrogance, they feel as of they are wearing the same pair of shoes as do Washington Democrats and their disturbingly partisan President: They won, have a majority and we will do what we want just because we can.

As the conservative GOP darling, Marco Rubio has graced SB 6 with his blessing, he has given his opponent an opportunity to show that he is a man with better judgement. Rubio didn’t think the bill through and relied on his mentor, Jeb Bush, a man who has a record of a questionable agenda with respect to education.

While the conservatives that are currently worshiping at the altar of Marco likely loathe John McCain, it is McCain’s independence from GOP power brokers that Florida needs most right now. Charlie Crist is losing badly to Rubio now in their race for the GOP senate nod, and should know that he cannot win. He’s signaled that he may veto this bill and has until Friday to decide.

It an irony that couldn’t be made up, it may be that the much malligned Crist saves Florida Rpublicans from themselves. With Senate Bill 6 quickly becoming a tsunami of discontent around the state, it’s passing could cause a seismic shift in Florida politics which some GOP and many independents switching to the Democrat Party. For some of those 40,000 GOP teachers – a number that does not inclube members not affiliated – SB 6 can create countless one issue voters who no longer vote for Republicans.

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In an ESPN story today, former Yankee strength trainer Brian McNamee says two things that are puzzling. First that one of the injectables he used on Clemens was lidocaine with B-12.

It’s easy to envision how he got the B-12, but not so much with the lidocaine. The later is a anesthetic that’s promarily used as a numbing agent to apply stiches or in dental work. In athletics its easy to see why a physician would choose to add lidocaine with any steroid. Its a technique the pysician uses to see if they “hit the spot” with their injection into a shoulder, knee or elbow. It would never be added to steroid injection into a large muscle like that of the buttocks. Nonetheless its worth questioning McNamee where he got the vile of lidocaine as this is considered to be a narcotic.

Second, McNamee says he injected Clemens at Yankee Stadium in the area which the hot tub was located. Was this area in a place where long time Yankee atheltic trainers Gene Monohan and Steve Donahue were working? If So, McNamee’s claim is questionable as there is no way on this earth that either Monohan or Donahue would have allowed a layman like McNamee to give a shot to an athlete. Nor would have Clemen’s chanced it if he felt that either of the two would have discovered them. If the hot tub at Yankee Stadium was clearly seperate from the training room does it make McNamee’s statement’s questionable.

At any rate the whole episode sheds light on the surge of “personal trainers’ whom baseball let in without vetting. Too may of them – like McNamee – had far too many links to the community of body building and traditional power lifting. Barry Bonds now notorious strength trainer, Greg Anderson is another. They saw major league players as willing dupes who could deliver the kind of access they could never obtain by going through the front door.

Still responsibility lies with players who felt they were untouchable and the suits whom run the game. It unltimately is about sceeding power and influence – something the game’s executive branch often sought to supress in their ATCs . Ultimately their lack of professional respect for ones like Monohan and Donohue helped fuel the disaster. ATC’s have long since earned the respect and appreciation by players and might have been one group if respectfully empowered by management might have been able to raise the alarm against charlatans like Anderson and McNamee.

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Big Oil. The populist mantra won’t work as it once did, but Dems used it in their efforts to demonize McCain on energy. A Google query of McCain taking money from oil had 325000 hits, most over the past two days. While Hess oil execs did decide to donate money to the McCain campaign after he announced his support for drillings, the Dem talking points don’t tell the entire story. Factcheck.org adds more:

Obama released a TV spot saying McCain’s campaign got $2 million from “Big Oil” while McCain proposed “another $4 billion in tax breaks” for the industry.

The truth is that McCain’s campaign has received $1.33 million from individuals employed in the oil and gas industry, not $2 million. Obama himself has received nearly $400,000, according to the most authoritative figures available. We find the $2 million figure is based on a mistaken calculation.

Furthermore, McCain is not proposing new tax breaks specifically targeted to the oil industry. He’s proposing a general reduction in the corporate income tax rate, which Democrats figure would benefit the five largest oil and gas companies by $3.8 billion.

Actually its tax relief that is passed on to the consumer at the pump. As I pointed out yesterday, in a four year period, Exxon paid $64.7 billion in federal taxes. American oil companies operate at a profit margin around 10%.

Factcheck has more on Dem assertions that McCain is in Big Oil’s pocket:

It bears repeating, as we’ve reminded readers before, that oil companies themselves don’t make donations. It’s illegal under federal law for corporations to donate directly to candidates and has been since 1918. The ad refers to donations from executives and employees of oil companies, given either directly or through company-sponsored political action committees, or PACs.

Both candidates accept donations from individual employees of oil companies. In fact, when Obama claimed in an ad last March that “I don’t take money from oil companies,” we criticized him for being a little too slick. The CRP puts Obama’s total from oil and gas donors at $394,465.

Based on CRP’s figures, McCain’s oil and gas donations account for just 0.9 cents out of every $100 he’s raised. Obama’s oil and gas total comes to 0.1 cents per $100. That’s a significant difference between the two candidates, and it’s clear that the industry is favoring McCain with its donations. Whether that puts him “in the pocket” of the industry is a judgment we’ll leave to our readers.

Also, Factcheck pointed out that McCain proposed tax cuts for all corporation and not just oil companies.

Still the current talking points indicate the Dems are going to attempt to deny the growing opinion of voters for more domestic drilling. Its seems that if voters understand that supply needs to be increased as well as a more immediate commitment to gaining independence from foreign oil, demonization of McCain and oil companies won’t work.

Dems are also using two other mantras. One is that we can’t drill our way out of this. Second is that we have only 3% of the world’s oil reserves, enough to last just 4.5 years. The first is misleading, the second is an inaccurate fact.

The assertion that we cannot drill out of this is misleading in that just the president’s announcement to end the presidential moritorium on drilling caused the cost of a barrell to drop. And it dropped again today. Some areas are already seeing the drop at the pump. Increasing oil supply will continue to lower costs at the pump even more.

A recent US Geological Survey Study has found that our own reserves are now 10 times more that they were when the 2004 figure of 3% came out.

America is sitting on top of a super massive 200 billion barrel Oil Field that could potentially make America Energy Independent and until now has largely gone unnoticed. Thanks to new technology the Bakken Formation in North Dakota could boost America’s Oil reserves by an incredible 10 times, giving western economies the trump card against OPEC’s short squeeze on oil supply and making Iranian and Venezuelan threats of disrupted supply irrelevant.

In the next 30 days the USGS (U.S. Geological Survey) will release a new report giving an accurate resource assessment of the Bakken Oil Formation that covers North Dakota and portions of South Dakota and Montana. With new horizontal drilling technology it is believed that from 175 to 500 billion barrels of recoverable oil are held in this 200,000 square mile reserve that was initially discovered in 1951. The USGS did an initial study back in 1999 that estimated 400 billion recoverable barrels were present but with prices bottoming out at $10 a barrel back then the report was dismissed because of the higher cost of horizontal drilling techniques that would be needed, estimated at $20-$40 a barrel.

This is just what is available in North Dakota. This WaPo story from 2006 indicates how much is available in the Gulf of Mexico. Dem talking point numbers are both outdated and misleading.

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