Barack Obama and the Democrats say that more drilling will not solve the current high price of oil because it will take 10 years to get the oil, and another few billion barrels per day will not reduce the price, citing the Bush Administration's numbers. They do not seem to recognize that conservation and alternative energy also won't make much impact for many years. For example, legislation to mandate auto fleet efficiency of 35 mpg won't have any effect at all for 3 to 4 years, and will only gradually reduce gasoline consumption after that; this is certainly not anything that will reduce the price of gasoline in the near term. Yesterday Robert Reich said that an additional 3 million barrels of oil per day wouldn't reduce the price of gasoline but by a penny or so, based on Bush Administration numbers. I don't know if the Bush Administration actually said that, but if so, it was a dumb thing to say. (The Democrats continue to tell us that the Bush Administration is totally inept, unreliable, and downright evil so why should I be impressed by their supply and demand analysis.) It seems to me that in 10 years we will want oil prices to be lower than they would otherwise, so we need to drill now. My question is, why can't we have both drilling and development of alternative energy sources and conservation? Our real need is for transportation fuel, and there we are a long way from anything that will replace gasoline. I have done a little analysis on alternative energy sources, and none of them appear to be mature enough to make a significant impact in the near term. Wind power is now being implemented at about as fast a pace as practical, and will never be the major source of electric power. A lot of nuclear power plants will be needed if we switch to a lot of plug-in electric cars. We can get the plug in cars faster than we can get the electric generation power to re-charge them. This gasoline price crisis has no easy solution, so it is tough for politicians since it is too complicated to address in "sound bites."