This crap about offshore drilling is a political wedge.

Both the oil companies and OPEC purposely keep oil supplies low to drive up prices. Economics 101. They want to constrict the supply tight enough that the price keeps rising. Their only interest is that of their stockholders. It's how capitalism works. They have no motive to bring down prices, and few real competitors to force them to do so. They're not going to save the American economy if we give them more land to drill on. It will stay in the ground like the millions of acres that they already have which are being left undrilled.

America isn't in a recession, but rather in a period of introspection.

The current market turbulence isn’t from just a freak event like the 1989 recession. It’s not the “irrational exuberance” of the Dot-Com bubble. It is something firmly rooted to the foundations of our economy. Something that if we react rationally to, we can resolve smoothly, and something that if we ignore will drag the country into the toilet.