If you can believe the scientists, nearly every animal species in our world has developed the art of communications by various means and to one extent or another. For the most part this communicating is a method of announcing danger, the availability of food, attracting a potential mate, or just telling the kids it’s time to come home. Nor does it seem that communications requires a highly developed intelligence either, as a few species of plants appear to have the ability of informing others of their species that they are under attack by insect pests, or so the claim is made. (I can just imagine the language around our Lodgepole jumbles when the Pine Beetles appear!) As the level of intelligence increases, the degree of communication appears to increase as well, into the ability of conveying a vast amount of abstract information along with the more basic data.
Imagine for a moment what might have happened to humanity, without the ability to transfer information between individuals. Someone might discover that cooking greatly improves the taste of food, but being unable to communicate, no one else can learn that fact by other than trial and error. Another individual designs a superior club, but no one else can take advantage of that design except by eventually copying it. Things could get real hectic in a hurry when a Sabertooth Tiger suddenly appears on the scene, and you can’t tell the kids to get up in a tree! Without the wondrous ability to communicate, I rather doubt that humanity would have lasted very long. Still, at the higher levels I’ll sometimes question our ability to communicate abstract thoughts. I’ll often read a technical paper, and when I’m finished with all the big words, double talk, and self congratulations, I find myself asking just what it was that the author was attempting to get across. Try actually listening to a political speech sometime, and making any sense of what was said!
A couple of hundred years ago, Americans were pretty much all on the same wavelength and the politicians usually didn’t have much trouble getting their point across to the voters. The contents of a speech were usually printed in the newspapers, everyone could read that speech at their leisure, and generally figure out just where the speaker stood. As time passed and technology changed the way we live, effective communications became an ability that seems to have fallen by the wayside, at least at the state and national level of politics.
The power of speech, both what is said and how it is spoken — is crucially important in politics. How should a President talk? George Washington never spoke publicly for more than ten minutes because of the pain caused by his false teeth, yet his lofty rhetoric established the presidency as a dignified institution. Thomas Jefferson was probably the most brilliant man in the history of American politics, and one of our better presidents, but he was such a poor public speaker that he instituted the century long tradition of sending the State of the Union message to Congress in the form of a letter! In the twentieth century, the development of modern media brought an end to the era of political oratory. A collection of sound bites soon took the place of the lengthy speeches that had once been fully developed arguments.
Like him or not, Franklin D. Roosevelt had a knack of explaining his goals and how he meant to go about reaching them to the American people. By way of his “Fireside chats”, most citizens felt he was speaking directly to them and explaining things in words they could readily understand. With his ability to communicate effectively, Roosevelt was able to convince the American people (or at least most of them) to support his “New Deal” programs, his “Arsenal of Democracy” concept, and even to supporting the violation of the neutrality laws as we joined Britain in the Battle of the Atlantic prior to America’s entry into WW II. Harry Truman’s speeches were terribly stilted until he threw away the script and talked in his normally combative “Give ‘em Hell Harry” style. He didn’t have Roosevelt’s polished speaking skills, but he spoke clearly and plainly to the American people, much more effectively than the media (or Thomas Dewey for that matter) would have thought possible. Ronald Reagan was the “great communicator” in our history, who’s speaking style and skills always seemed to connect with the American people.
Lyndon Johnson could speak quite clearly and plainly when he so wished, but he was a very poor communicator. The loss of the Vietnam War can be laid at his feet, as neither he nor his speechwriters were ever able to find the words explaining to the American public just why we were engaged in Vietnam, and why the war was important to our nation. Jimmy Carter wasn’t much of a public speaker either. President Bush the younger stumbles a lot in his speeches much to the mirth of the democrats, but much more seriously he has a similar problem to that of LBJ, his inability to effectively explaining the war in Iraq and Afghanistan to the American public.
The speaking skills of this year's presidential candidates are just one of the factors that will affect the election’s outcome. Barack Obama is tall, self-assured and photogenic, with the gift of oratory. He has a polished speaking manner, a smooth delivery, and a warm, friendly demeanor. With Obama, there’s no question about his style, but rather it’s the substance of his talks that bother so many people. While John McCain may never become a motivational speaker, his speaking style affects audiences in a different way. His strength of character, experience and authenticity show through, while his town-hall style allows him to demonstrate his judgment, depth of knowledge and solid understanding of crucial issues. And to me, content is always more important than style.
Obama’s speeches are somewhat reminiscent of an evangelist speaking from the mountaintop. His rhetoric and call for change strikes a cord with those lofty thinkers who believe they have all the answers and could save the world if only they were in charge. John McCain sounds more like a military leader briefing his troops, with his plain speaking and “nuts-and-bolts” proposals appealing more to the down-to-earth folks who will worry about solving the world’s problems, after they’re reasonably sure they can feed the kids, put gas in the family flivver, and avoid a confrontation with the mortgage company.
Sunday, August 24, 2008
Monday, August 18, 2008
WW III?
“Total War” is roughly defined as “a conflict of unlimited scope in which a belligerent engages in the total mobilization of all resources available to him, whether human, industrial, agricultural, military, natural, technological, or otherwise, in order to entirely destroy or render beyond use their rival's capacity to continue to resist. In a total war, there is less differentiation between combatants and non-combatants than in previous conflicts, as nearly every person from a particular country, civilians and soldiers alike, can be considered to be part of their belligerent's war effort.” While the concept of total war has been around for a very long time, its first widespread appearance followed the French Revolution, where the French “levée en masse” was mobilized to combat the anti-revolutionary European alliance. I will add that in a total war, it is not necessarily a case of “less differentiation between combatants and non-combatants” as it is more properly a case of “no differentiation”.
WW II was a total war by any definition, and we can readily see that all the combatant nations happily bombed their opponents cities in an attempt to kill off skilled civilian workers as well as break civilian moral. Japan indiscriminately bombed Chinese cities; the Luftwaffe indiscriminately bombed English cities, with the Royal Air Force happily returning the favor. The USAAF primarily tried to bomb industrial targets in Germany, while indiscriminately burning out the very large residential areas of numerous Japanese cities. We all know of the nuclear attacks on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as well, where hundreds of thousands of civilians were killed.
Until late in the cold war, both Soviet and American nuclear weapons were targeted at cities for the most part, in order to accomplish the greatest possible damage to their opponents infrastructure. (Cities were about the smallest target that could be accurately hit, with accuracy being defined as anywhere within a few miles of the aim point.)
All this brings us to World War Three, a conflict that most Americans deny has happened… yet. Still, many of us maintain that WW III began in November 1979, without the expected nuclear exchange between superpowers. You don't have to be an employee of the CIA or NSC to understand that American citizens and interests have been under organized attack since 1979, when Islamic fundamentalists engineered the take-over of the American embassy in Tehran. Led by an inept administration, America could not respond effectively or decisively, and the terrorists became braver with each day. When the President finally decided that “enough is enough”, and did do something about this little understood war, the democratic left began weeping, wailing, wringing their hands, and proclaiming “it’s all our fault!”, while demanding that we immediately surrender and bring the troops home, effectively they’re hiding their heads in the sand. You can listen to John Murtha, Nancy Pelosi, and Harry Reid if you like… and your conclusions will be completely wrong, because we’re facing the greatest threat to our existence in our nation’s history! The current idea of total war is simply break one’s enemies will to resist, a point the terrorists obviously understand, and their efforts appear to be working, on our congress at least!
And it is a war to the death as well, misunderstood by most Americans because we are not fighting a particular nation or even a coalition of nations. It’s a war of ideologies, no less so than the cold war, pitting autocratic Islam against the distinctly western concept of freedom and democracy. The religious part of this war has been going on for centuries as Islam periodically tried to encroach upon Europe. They have been defeated in the past to the point of taking hundreds of years to recover, but they have never been totally defeated, and if they are left alone they will recover and try again. Yet they may not need to try again… as they presently have the “ultimate” weapon to defeat the west readily at hand, in the form of oil. Do you have any idea what will happen if the entire Middle East turns their support to Iran, which they will do if we simply pull out of the mid-east? It’s not the price of oil we will have to worry about, as oil simply will not be available to us! And yes, it certainly is a war about oil as we’re so often told by the protesters, considering that our economy will curl up and die if that mid-east oil supply is cut off right now. Forget about a recession, we’ll have a depression that will make 1929 look like child’s play!
The present cost of imported oil has done considerable harm to our economy, and which, along with our fast approaching presidential election, has diverted our attention from the real threat of the mid-east. The temporary quiet in Iraq, and lack of recent attacks against America proper have lulled far to many Americans into a false sense of security. This war is far from over…
No matter how much energy any nation conserves, and no matter how quickly anyone develops alternative energy sources, oil and natural gas will power the world economy for the next fifty years and probably more. The Middle East's oil reserves mean that a stable Muslim world is the key to world stability. However, economic development or the lack of it have a large bearing on the Muslim world, with the Muslims seemingly unable to improve the standard of living for the majority of their populations even with the enormous wealth of petrodollars available to them. The booming Muslim population means that there is a vast increase in the "troublesome cohort of male youngsters in ages from 15 to 29", that are chronically unemployed and poverty stricken. Unemployed young men are easily recruited to become “soldiers of jihad” by autocrats and theocrats that use "historical grievances" to blame for their economic condition.
We proclaim that we are engaged in a “War on Terror”, yet all we see is a “comparatively” small scale ground war in Afghanistan and Iraq. But radical Islam, directed by fanatics, supported by fundamentalist governments, and financed by oil revenue, is engaged in a total war with America, one in which they continue to mobilized every asset available to them… and America continually panders to “world opinion”! Without a strong US presence in the Mid-east, which effectively forces a stalemate upon our enemies, Iran can readily dominate the entire region since Iraq is no longer a military threat to them. They have turned their attention to the only western country that can block their economic world dominance, and they are convinced that they will eventually win, because the US is so divided. If we allow those Islamic madmen to gain a nuclear capability then we had better hunker down, because we’ll have lost, big time.
This religious/economic war will continue until the American people elect some tough “no nonsense” wartime leaders that recognize the situation for what it is, and who will act effectively and decisively to carry this war to an unquestionably victorious end. If that means we must repudiate the pious pleadings of our “weeping willies”, then so be it. If it means that we must engage in large scale military actions around the world, then so be it. Certainly we shouldn’t force “our” way of life on “them”, but we must demonstrate beyond any possible misunderstanding that we are not going to allow “them” to force their way of life on us, and neither are we going to back down in the face of their threats! The message we must forcibly impress on the Islamic leadership is that if they really believe in the “rightness” of terror, then they certainly can’t complain if the US Armed Forces come down on them like the proverbial “ton of bricks”, and show them just what terror is all about!
And if the Iranians don’t like America’s new attitude… well, I’ll see ‘yer shiny new rockets… and raise you a carrier battle group.
WW II was a total war by any definition, and we can readily see that all the combatant nations happily bombed their opponents cities in an attempt to kill off skilled civilian workers as well as break civilian moral. Japan indiscriminately bombed Chinese cities; the Luftwaffe indiscriminately bombed English cities, with the Royal Air Force happily returning the favor. The USAAF primarily tried to bomb industrial targets in Germany, while indiscriminately burning out the very large residential areas of numerous Japanese cities. We all know of the nuclear attacks on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as well, where hundreds of thousands of civilians were killed.
Until late in the cold war, both Soviet and American nuclear weapons were targeted at cities for the most part, in order to accomplish the greatest possible damage to their opponents infrastructure. (Cities were about the smallest target that could be accurately hit, with accuracy being defined as anywhere within a few miles of the aim point.)
All this brings us to World War Three, a conflict that most Americans deny has happened… yet. Still, many of us maintain that WW III began in November 1979, without the expected nuclear exchange between superpowers. You don't have to be an employee of the CIA or NSC to understand that American citizens and interests have been under organized attack since 1979, when Islamic fundamentalists engineered the take-over of the American embassy in Tehran. Led by an inept administration, America could not respond effectively or decisively, and the terrorists became braver with each day. When the President finally decided that “enough is enough”, and did do something about this little understood war, the democratic left began weeping, wailing, wringing their hands, and proclaiming “it’s all our fault!”, while demanding that we immediately surrender and bring the troops home, effectively they’re hiding their heads in the sand. You can listen to John Murtha, Nancy Pelosi, and Harry Reid if you like… and your conclusions will be completely wrong, because we’re facing the greatest threat to our existence in our nation’s history! The current idea of total war is simply break one’s enemies will to resist, a point the terrorists obviously understand, and their efforts appear to be working, on our congress at least!
And it is a war to the death as well, misunderstood by most Americans because we are not fighting a particular nation or even a coalition of nations. It’s a war of ideologies, no less so than the cold war, pitting autocratic Islam against the distinctly western concept of freedom and democracy. The religious part of this war has been going on for centuries as Islam periodically tried to encroach upon Europe. They have been defeated in the past to the point of taking hundreds of years to recover, but they have never been totally defeated, and if they are left alone they will recover and try again. Yet they may not need to try again… as they presently have the “ultimate” weapon to defeat the west readily at hand, in the form of oil. Do you have any idea what will happen if the entire Middle East turns their support to Iran, which they will do if we simply pull out of the mid-east? It’s not the price of oil we will have to worry about, as oil simply will not be available to us! And yes, it certainly is a war about oil as we’re so often told by the protesters, considering that our economy will curl up and die if that mid-east oil supply is cut off right now. Forget about a recession, we’ll have a depression that will make 1929 look like child’s play!
The present cost of imported oil has done considerable harm to our economy, and which, along with our fast approaching presidential election, has diverted our attention from the real threat of the mid-east. The temporary quiet in Iraq, and lack of recent attacks against America proper have lulled far to many Americans into a false sense of security. This war is far from over…
No matter how much energy any nation conserves, and no matter how quickly anyone develops alternative energy sources, oil and natural gas will power the world economy for the next fifty years and probably more. The Middle East's oil reserves mean that a stable Muslim world is the key to world stability. However, economic development or the lack of it have a large bearing on the Muslim world, with the Muslims seemingly unable to improve the standard of living for the majority of their populations even with the enormous wealth of petrodollars available to them. The booming Muslim population means that there is a vast increase in the "troublesome cohort of male youngsters in ages from 15 to 29", that are chronically unemployed and poverty stricken. Unemployed young men are easily recruited to become “soldiers of jihad” by autocrats and theocrats that use "historical grievances" to blame for their economic condition.
We proclaim that we are engaged in a “War on Terror”, yet all we see is a “comparatively” small scale ground war in Afghanistan and Iraq. But radical Islam, directed by fanatics, supported by fundamentalist governments, and financed by oil revenue, is engaged in a total war with America, one in which they continue to mobilized every asset available to them… and America continually panders to “world opinion”! Without a strong US presence in the Mid-east, which effectively forces a stalemate upon our enemies, Iran can readily dominate the entire region since Iraq is no longer a military threat to them. They have turned their attention to the only western country that can block their economic world dominance, and they are convinced that they will eventually win, because the US is so divided. If we allow those Islamic madmen to gain a nuclear capability then we had better hunker down, because we’ll have lost, big time.
This religious/economic war will continue until the American people elect some tough “no nonsense” wartime leaders that recognize the situation for what it is, and who will act effectively and decisively to carry this war to an unquestionably victorious end. If that means we must repudiate the pious pleadings of our “weeping willies”, then so be it. If it means that we must engage in large scale military actions around the world, then so be it. Certainly we shouldn’t force “our” way of life on “them”, but we must demonstrate beyond any possible misunderstanding that we are not going to allow “them” to force their way of life on us, and neither are we going to back down in the face of their threats! The message we must forcibly impress on the Islamic leadership is that if they really believe in the “rightness” of terror, then they certainly can’t complain if the US Armed Forces come down on them like the proverbial “ton of bricks”, and show them just what terror is all about!
And if the Iranians don’t like America’s new attitude… well, I’ll see ‘yer shiny new rockets… and raise you a carrier battle group.
Monday, August 11, 2008
Oil Again
In recent months there have been three problems facing the nation that seem to have most Americans quite upset, if we are to believe the news media. These are, the war in Iraq, the rather severe economic down turn, and closely related… the steady price increase of food and fuel. The Democrats of course blame the Republicans, and through them the President, for all these problems. The Republicans in their turn happily point out that the Democrats control congress, and so far, despite their glowing promises, have failed to do anything about the whole sorry situation. In the meantime we face a national election, wherein both political parties are so busy struggling for position and a favorable press that nothing can get done anyway! The mainstream news media continue their “Oh woe is me, the sky is falling” gloom and doom predictions, Al Bore continues to tout his version of global warming, Hollyweird’s “progressive” celebrities keep blaming America for all of the world’s problems, and the Russians are mad at us again. Naturally, the American people are taking a beating… again. Or maybe I should say “still”?
I don’t really understand just how the various localized wars and ethnic cleansing going on in Africa can be blamed on the US, nor do I understand why an American missile shield designed to protect Europe from the possibility of mid-eastern nuclear armed rockets is considered to be a threat to Russia. Matter of fact, there are a whole lot of things going on in today’s world that really don’t make a lot of sense to me… reckon that’s why I’m not a TV news talking head or carnival fortune teller… I don’t have a functional crystal ball even if I do sound that way on occasion. But I do know that I’m getting highly fed-up with the situation in this country today!
A couple of years ago the Democrats solemnly proclaimed that “the war in Iraq is lost”, and that the United States should immediately run for home. Instead, the President finally sent enough troops to Iraq to accomplish something besides being targets (the “surge”), put some severe pressure on the Iraqi insurgents, and now it appears that we’ve just about won our part of the conflict. ‘Course the Democrats still want us to come running home with our tail between our legs. Senator Obama, who has not yet been elected president, makes a tour through the area, and apparently arranges for massive troop withdrawals. Meanwhile, Senator McCain, who has not yet been elected president, makes a tour through the area, and seems to think everything is just peachy-keen. At the same time, the Iraqi’s just want us to go home, so they can get on with their civil war. I guess the Iraqi’s… and Halliburton… figure we’ve run out of free money.
The high price of foreign crude oil is raising hob with what’s left of our economy, driving up the prices of everything from gasoline to food to real estate, and in the meantime driving down the stock market. The democratic leadership insists that off-shore drilling won’t have any noticeable effect for fifteen or twenty years, but when the President calls for lifting the drilling ban, the price of oil immediately drops about twenty dollars a barrel! (Retail prices “should” drop slightly in a few more weeks I understand.) Yet the “leader” of the democrats, Senator and Presidential hopeful Barack Obama, says that 'Reversing 30 years of failed energy policies will merely prolong the failed energy policies of 30 years.' Humm… I really don’t understand how correcting a failed policy will prolong it.
At the same time, the enviro-nuts wax hysterical, congressmen jockey for position, and naturally nothing gets accomplished! Ms. Pelosi screams hysterically that we’re supposed to exhaust “all other options” before we start drilling. Other options? I do wish she’d explain how we’re supposed to run the trucks that deliver food all over this country on wind power. How is a farmer supposed to run his combine on solar power? Am I supposed to heat my house on tidal energy? Gravity might power my old pick-up on a downhill run, but after all, most of Idaho seems to be built on an up-hill slope! “Conserving” fuel might aid the cities a bit (and perhaps reduce their smog problem), but are those of us who live in rural areas supposed to depend on electric golf carts for long distance transportation? A hydrogen economy infrastructure is twenty to fifty years down the line. Sorry lady, there ain’t no options available that will have any effect on our national economy in the here and now, except greatly increased domestic oil production! And we should have been doing just that some twenty or more years ago.
Sixty years ago America’s domestic oil fueled nearly the entire Allied cause during WW II. Am I now to believe that, with our known huge oil reserves, we can’t fuel our own economy today!? We’ve got more oil in the ground than the Saudi’s do! We have scadzillions of cubic metres of methane buried in the seafloor off our coasts, which the environmentalists naturally won’t let us access! Or we can shift our electrical generating capacity from oil burning to coal, and we can build a lot of nuclear power plants. But all that is time consuming, and just how much more time do we have? Our national economy is energy (oil) driven, and is presently on the verge of disaster. In the 1940’s American know-how went from a rather vague theory to a functional A-Bomb in four years. In the 1960’s American know-how progressed from rockets that had a habit of blowing up, to American astronauts walking on the Moon, in just nine years. Now the democrats would have me believe that American know-how can’t drill a few holes in the ground in less than fifteen years!?
Hand in glove with the radical environmentalists, our congressional leadership gives every indication of calmly sitting on their hands while waiting for our economy to totally collapse, and for the United States of America to go the way of the Soviet Union. Why? We desperately need oil, but congress refuses to repeal the drilling ban. Why? Congress refuses to do anything about our borders, and literally welcomes a flood of illegal immigrants, while sending tens of thousands of American jobs overseas via NAFTA. Why? China appears to be dumping their contaminated industrial products on us, and congress can’t seem to get a handle on the problem. Why? Not everybody in this country makes a hundred thousand dollars a year, leaving most of us having to float a bank loan if we go to the gas station or grocery store, and congress does nothing. Why? “Poor folks” are loosing their homes in record numbers, leaving those properties to be snapped up by the rich for nearly nothing, and congress merely eases things for the rich! Why? Advanced medical care is beyond the economic reach of most Americans, and congress continues to do nothing about it. Why? Sen. Obama wants to send eight hundred and forty five BILLION of our dollars overseas to temporarily ease things for the world’s poor, while we have plenty of poor or homeless folks of our own to worry about. And congress is seriously considering doing just that! Why? The environmentalists have managed to tie a good many of our rural economies in knots, while congress merely looks on and smiles benignly. Why? The President of the United States advocates “spying” on American citizens in the name of national security, and congress, who is constitutionally responsible for protecting our citizens from just such executive excess, hands him a blank check! Why? The President solemnly asks for, and Congress happily hands him, the “Patriot Act” that quite effectively suspends our Constitution and the Bill of Rights! Why? Why doesn’t Congress do something to protect and defend our nation and our citizens for a change? After all, we don’t pay their ridiculously high salaries so they can run around the world pretending to be Very Important Personage’s rather than common American citizens in whom we’ve temporarily entrusted an important job.
I think it’s well past time for the American people to rear up on their hind legs “in justifiable fury”, and demand some straight answers from our elected representatives! If we don’t get those answers, then I’d say it’s time for a voter’s rebellion to “Throw ‘da bums out”, and elect an entirely new bunch of bums!
I don’t really understand just how the various localized wars and ethnic cleansing going on in Africa can be blamed on the US, nor do I understand why an American missile shield designed to protect Europe from the possibility of mid-eastern nuclear armed rockets is considered to be a threat to Russia. Matter of fact, there are a whole lot of things going on in today’s world that really don’t make a lot of sense to me… reckon that’s why I’m not a TV news talking head or carnival fortune teller… I don’t have a functional crystal ball even if I do sound that way on occasion. But I do know that I’m getting highly fed-up with the situation in this country today!
A couple of years ago the Democrats solemnly proclaimed that “the war in Iraq is lost”, and that the United States should immediately run for home. Instead, the President finally sent enough troops to Iraq to accomplish something besides being targets (the “surge”), put some severe pressure on the Iraqi insurgents, and now it appears that we’ve just about won our part of the conflict. ‘Course the Democrats still want us to come running home with our tail between our legs. Senator Obama, who has not yet been elected president, makes a tour through the area, and apparently arranges for massive troop withdrawals. Meanwhile, Senator McCain, who has not yet been elected president, makes a tour through the area, and seems to think everything is just peachy-keen. At the same time, the Iraqi’s just want us to go home, so they can get on with their civil war. I guess the Iraqi’s… and Halliburton… figure we’ve run out of free money.
The high price of foreign crude oil is raising hob with what’s left of our economy, driving up the prices of everything from gasoline to food to real estate, and in the meantime driving down the stock market. The democratic leadership insists that off-shore drilling won’t have any noticeable effect for fifteen or twenty years, but when the President calls for lifting the drilling ban, the price of oil immediately drops about twenty dollars a barrel! (Retail prices “should” drop slightly in a few more weeks I understand.) Yet the “leader” of the democrats, Senator and Presidential hopeful Barack Obama, says that 'Reversing 30 years of failed energy policies will merely prolong the failed energy policies of 30 years.' Humm… I really don’t understand how correcting a failed policy will prolong it.
At the same time, the enviro-nuts wax hysterical, congressmen jockey for position, and naturally nothing gets accomplished! Ms. Pelosi screams hysterically that we’re supposed to exhaust “all other options” before we start drilling. Other options? I do wish she’d explain how we’re supposed to run the trucks that deliver food all over this country on wind power. How is a farmer supposed to run his combine on solar power? Am I supposed to heat my house on tidal energy? Gravity might power my old pick-up on a downhill run, but after all, most of Idaho seems to be built on an up-hill slope! “Conserving” fuel might aid the cities a bit (and perhaps reduce their smog problem), but are those of us who live in rural areas supposed to depend on electric golf carts for long distance transportation? A hydrogen economy infrastructure is twenty to fifty years down the line. Sorry lady, there ain’t no options available that will have any effect on our national economy in the here and now, except greatly increased domestic oil production! And we should have been doing just that some twenty or more years ago.
Sixty years ago America’s domestic oil fueled nearly the entire Allied cause during WW II. Am I now to believe that, with our known huge oil reserves, we can’t fuel our own economy today!? We’ve got more oil in the ground than the Saudi’s do! We have scadzillions of cubic metres of methane buried in the seafloor off our coasts, which the environmentalists naturally won’t let us access! Or we can shift our electrical generating capacity from oil burning to coal, and we can build a lot of nuclear power plants. But all that is time consuming, and just how much more time do we have? Our national economy is energy (oil) driven, and is presently on the verge of disaster. In the 1940’s American know-how went from a rather vague theory to a functional A-Bomb in four years. In the 1960’s American know-how progressed from rockets that had a habit of blowing up, to American astronauts walking on the Moon, in just nine years. Now the democrats would have me believe that American know-how can’t drill a few holes in the ground in less than fifteen years!?
Hand in glove with the radical environmentalists, our congressional leadership gives every indication of calmly sitting on their hands while waiting for our economy to totally collapse, and for the United States of America to go the way of the Soviet Union. Why? We desperately need oil, but congress refuses to repeal the drilling ban. Why? Congress refuses to do anything about our borders, and literally welcomes a flood of illegal immigrants, while sending tens of thousands of American jobs overseas via NAFTA. Why? China appears to be dumping their contaminated industrial products on us, and congress can’t seem to get a handle on the problem. Why? Not everybody in this country makes a hundred thousand dollars a year, leaving most of us having to float a bank loan if we go to the gas station or grocery store, and congress does nothing. Why? “Poor folks” are loosing their homes in record numbers, leaving those properties to be snapped up by the rich for nearly nothing, and congress merely eases things for the rich! Why? Advanced medical care is beyond the economic reach of most Americans, and congress continues to do nothing about it. Why? Sen. Obama wants to send eight hundred and forty five BILLION of our dollars overseas to temporarily ease things for the world’s poor, while we have plenty of poor or homeless folks of our own to worry about. And congress is seriously considering doing just that! Why? The environmentalists have managed to tie a good many of our rural economies in knots, while congress merely looks on and smiles benignly. Why? The President of the United States advocates “spying” on American citizens in the name of national security, and congress, who is constitutionally responsible for protecting our citizens from just such executive excess, hands him a blank check! Why? The President solemnly asks for, and Congress happily hands him, the “Patriot Act” that quite effectively suspends our Constitution and the Bill of Rights! Why? Why doesn’t Congress do something to protect and defend our nation and our citizens for a change? After all, we don’t pay their ridiculously high salaries so they can run around the world pretending to be Very Important Personage’s rather than common American citizens in whom we’ve temporarily entrusted an important job.
I think it’s well past time for the American people to rear up on their hind legs “in justifiable fury”, and demand some straight answers from our elected representatives! If we don’t get those answers, then I’d say it’s time for a voter’s rebellion to “Throw ‘da bums out”, and elect an entirely new bunch of bums!
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