Stuck on Stupid

If there is one thing we ought to be demanding from our elected officials it's a decent energy policy. The truth is at the moment, we don't have one. Powerful environmentalist lobbies have for years managed to stymie any effective move towards energy independence by keeping govenment regulations so incredibly complex and difficult to deal with that building something like a new power plant is virtually impossible.

So how do we acheive energy independence? Well, step 1, we drill. Lets face it, at the moment the vast majority of our energy problem is gasoline. Vehicles need it, and we don't have nearly enough of it. The buzz word "alternative energy" sounds nice, but a windmill in my backyard isn't going to put gas in my gas tank. In fact it won't even generate enough electricity to power my air conditioner. So lets be honest about "alternative energy", it's a pipe dream. Wind power simply cannot possibly keep up with more than a tiny fraction of our countries energy needs, it's simply to inefficient. Solar is as bad if not worse. In the short term we need to increase our oil supply, and the only way to do that is drill.

We start with ANWAR. Forget all the pictures you've seen on the news broadcasts about the "beautiful, unspoiled wilderness", that's a load of crap. The truth is ANWAR is mostly permafrost tundra, in short it's one of the ugliest, most useless stretches of dirt on the planet. The pictures you've seen were taken from ANWAR, but they are not pictures of ANWAR, instead the pictures are usually pointed away from the permafrost tundra that make up what is actually ANWAR and pointed towards the mountains that surround the region. The truth is ANWAR has about as about as much "unspoiled, natural beauty" as the surface of the moon. It's more of a wasteland than a wilderness.

Now, even if we start drilling in ANWAR and off shore today it's not going to significantly increase our oil production in a meaningful way for a few years. However a lot of what goes into the price of gasoline isn't so much the actual cost of a barrel of oil, it is instead driven up by speculators who are trying to make a quick buck on oil futures. Once you announce your going to start drilling, prices will drop significantly as a lot of these speculators will look elsewhere to speculate.

But increasing our oil production is only a short term fix. We need to move away from vehicles that use gasoline or oil as a primary source of fuel, and while CNG (compressed natural gas) shows some promise in this regard it still suffers from the same two major drawbacks that oil does. It is a fossil fuel and as such it has a limited supply. It isn't something we ourselves can produce. So our best bet for a long term fix to the problem would be to replace cars that rely on fossil fuels with vehicles that utilize electricity instead.

The hybrids currently being produced are a good start, but we need vehicles that are entirely electric and we need to start investing in the technology to make them feasible right now. Tremendous advancements in the field of battery storage and recharging have already been made, but we need further funding for this research. We need vehicles that can be recharged, rather than refueled, if we ever truly want to be energy independent. Then all we need is an abundunt supply of electricity, something we don't have to drill for, something that doesn't have a limited suply. It's something that can be generated on demand.

So how best to generate the electricity we need? Our best bet at the moment, without a doubt, is nuclear. It offers tremendous energy production with what is by far the lowest level enviornmental impact. A single nuclear power plant in my home state genereates most of the electricity needed for my state. Sadly however with all the regulations and red tape involved building another is nearly impossible. Those regulations need to be streamlined and the red tape needs to be removed if we ever want to have any hope of being energy independent.

If we ever want to be energy independent we need to start taking steps now, because the problem is only going to get worse from here. All this pie in the sky talk our politicians give us about "alternative energy" is worthless. Wind and solar sound great, but the truth is they simply cannot generate sufficient quantities of power to make them cost effective, and it's doubtful that even billions more dumped into researching either is going to produce much in the way of effective results anytime in even the distant future, much less the near future. We need to stop listening to the rhetoric and the hype and start demanding that our leaders do something about this and soon.

Either that or we can all continue to bury our heads in the sand and in a few years we'll look back and remember with longing when gas was "only" $4 a gallon.

Community Organizer - that's a racial slur, at least it is if you drink the kool-aid being offerred up by the Obama campaign. They are so desperate to find anything, absolutely anything, they can use to stir up racial tensions. Why? Simple, Because for them it means more votes come election day. Votes by people who are nngry at being the targets of racism, and votes by people who despise racism.

Funny thing is though, the most racial comments made in this campaign were never uttered by republicans, but rather by democrats. Indeed perhaps the most racist remark made to date was uttered by none other than Senator Joe Biden, Obama's VP pick.

Now in the interest of fairness and full disclosure it should be noted that this remark was made long before Biden was chosen as Obama's VP, indeed it was back when he was running against Obama for the nomination. But here's what Biden had to say:

"I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy," Biden said. "I mean, that's a storybook, man."

The first mainstream African American. Can you believe it? Well, apparently Mr. Biden needs a racial sensitive class something severe, or at the very least a huge shoehorn to remove his abnormally large foot from his abnormally large mouth.

He suggests that Obama is somehow different than most African americans, because Obama is "clean", "articulate", "main-stream", and "nice looking". That sort of implies that in Biden's view apparently most african americans must be dirty, uneducated, members of a fringe group and ugly. Scary stuff really, when you stop and think about it, that someone in this day and age could possibly make a remark that is so utterly moronic.

So while the Obama camp runs about trying so desperately to scare up some sort of emotional response to the supposed racial overtones in the term "community organizer" it's rather funny to consider that the most overtly racial statement made in this entire campaign about Obama was made by his own pick for a VP running mate. I guess it's Obama's way of saying, it's ok to be overtly racist, as long as your a democrat.

And in truth Obama really doesn't have much of a leg to stand on here, whining about the republican's deriding his lack of experience and pointing out that other than being a junior senator his only "experience" is that of being a "community organizer". It was the Obama camp that opened the door to this, when they went after Governer Palin for being a "small town mayor" and thus not qualified for the job as president.

But again I think we should turn to the words of Obama's running mate, Joe Biden, for clarification.

"The presidency is not a job that lends itself to on the job training.", so said Joe Biden of Barrack Obama's experience during the primaries. Even Biden knows that this junior senator who has done virtually nothing during his extremely brief time in the Senate is simply not qualified to be President.

And pointing that out isn't racist, it's just common sense.

Unless you've been living under a rock the last few days it's doubtless you've heard about Senator Barrack Obama's rather idiotic gaffe. Seems the good senator just couldn't resist making some half baked comment about putting lipstick on a pig, and that this comment has been construed by many as being offensive and sexist.

Ok, was this a reference to Governor Sarah Palin? Honestly, I think that's probably the wrong question to be asking right from the outset. The question we should be asking is, what standards would the democrats holda a republican too if he had made such a ridiculous comment that could be so easily misconstrued?

Anybody remember the whole debacle with Senator Trent Lott? He made a comment about Senator Strom Thurmond having a distinguished career at Thurmond's birthday party, and he was smeared as a racist.

That innocent comment was enough to force him to resign, all because in 1948 Thurmond ran on a pro-segregation platform. Suddenly Lott was painted as a racist, by the entire national media with the democratic party only too happy to participate and indeed even lead the charge for his resignation.

So, should we not hold Obama to the same standard? Where are the scores of outraged democrats screaming for Obama to apologize profusely and then resign? Are they not the party that supposedly champions women's rights?

Well it seems they are all far to busy coming up with new and even more childish ways to make personal attacks on Sarah Palin. The snide comments are nearly endless, from the remarks from one democratic party official that she was only chosen for the VP slot because she "didn't have an abortion".

We've had the liberal media hounding this poor woman and trying to make some sort of hay out of the fact that her teenage daughter was pregnant, and even suggesting that she couldn't possibly be VP and still be a good mother to her children.

Will the hypocracy never end? Has anyone ever dared to suggest that Hillary shouldn't run for office because she's a mom? If Chelsea were pregnant and unmarried, would we hear stories about that for weeks on every major news outlet in an attempt to smear Hillary Clinton?

Lets face it folks, if the democratic party wants to engage in this sort of nonsense then I say it's about time somebody put the shoe on the other foot, or wiped the lipstick off the pig if you prefer.

Maybe it's time we held Obama to the same standard that his party leaders want to hold all republicans too. Lets demand a formal apology from Obama, and then make certain he steps down as the presidential nominee for the democratic party since he's obviously a sexist pig for what was most likely a remark taken out of context.

After all, that's the same thing the democrats required of Trent Lott. Seems only fair.