Today 80 percent of all the oil that comes out of the Gulf is from 1 000 feet or more and today almost a third of it is more than 5 000 feet below the surface. What hasn't happened is the safety and the ability to respond to a negative event such as this blowout has been far outrun by the technology of drilling itself. We need to close that gap.

But Big Oil and Big Coal have always been as skilled at propaganda as they are at mining and drilling. Like the tobacco industry before them their success depends on keeping Americans stupid.

Drill everything mine everything roll back regulations tweak the science expedite permits. Sound familiar? The Republicans offer up more 19th-Century solutions to our 21st-Century energy problems.

But for the children of the poorest people we're stripping the curriculum removing the arts and music and drilling the children into useful labor. We're not valuing a child for the time in which she actually is a child.

The combination of landing the biggest interview of my career and having a drill in my back reminds me that God only gives us what we can handle and that it helps to have a good sense of humor when we run smack into the absurdity of life.

Happiness is your dentist telling you it won't hurt and then having him catch his hand in the drill.

Even though I disagree with many of the changes when I see the privates graduate at the end of the day when they walk off that drill field at the end of the ceremony they are still fine privates outstanding well motivated privates.

In any crass political calculation drilling for oil will always win more votes than putting a price on carbon. But if I recall what I was taught in fifth-grade American government class we elect presidents to do more than crass political calculations.

No one does a better cleaner or environmental friendlier than the United States when it comes to drilling for oil gas coal oil refineries and fish friendly hydroelectric.

I didn't really get into golf until I was about 14. My mom and dad were taking lessons from a pro an hour and a half from our farm in Cohuna Australia. When they got home I'd ask my mom to explain everything they learned - drills and all.