Clear Eyes
It’s troubling that the NY TImes can’t find a more worthy columnist than Nixon speech writer, intelligent design proponent, game show host, pro-life activist, and commercial pitchman Ben Stein.
In this Sunday’s column, after noting that the gargantuan oil supply we currently enjoy is largely being wasted, he concludes we should *increase* subsidies for oil producers, maximize offshore drilling domestically, and step up environmentally disastrous conversion of coal and tar sands to gasoline.
Hopefully we listen to our engineers and not our idiots.
May 27th, 2008 at 12:24 pm
yeah, Ben Stein, aka B.S. — somehow he’s avoided the ‘batsh*t crazy’ label all these years.
props for calling him out.
May 27th, 2008 at 2:22 pm
Can you expand on why you think he is an idiot?
May 27th, 2008 at 4:49 pm
Yea! Maybe I should run as fast away from this site as I can. I think all of that is great. Drill! I say Drill! Well, I am very pro life. Do you know any women who have aborted who aren’t haunted by it? I don’t. Intelligent design gives us the wisdom to not screw up the rest of our lives as we live in regret over past mistakes. OK I am running away from this site.
May 27th, 2008 at 5:44 pm
Who reads the New York Times still? - Stephan
May 27th, 2008 at 7:49 pm
No drilling, no nukes, no cole,whats your plan to power this country?your just the typical liberal living in a dream world
May 28th, 2008 at 6:26 am
Oh stop whining about gas prices in England its $9.00 a gallon !
Try filling up your SUV at that price.
The price is going to keep going up, except in places like China, where the government controls the price of fuel. The number of cars in China is forecasted to increase from 35 to 120 million in the next 5 years.
We need cars that use less gas, so that we can spend the money we save on non-essential items such as food !
May 28th, 2008 at 8:05 am
You think you’re credible b/c you helped set up a classified section?
If you guys are so damn ‘concerned’ and caring and anti-corporate, why don’t you take corporations’ ad money and donate it to great causes? Self-centered, self-absorbed and self-destructing. That’s craigslist… leaving perfectly good resources on the table.
And about your liberal rant… I just vomited. Hypocritical complaining is the only thing liberals can do well.
May 29th, 2008 at 6:52 am
Good post. Stein is interesting in the fact that he thinks that intelligent design is actually worthy of discussion yet he is not 100% BS when it comes to other things (close to it though). Yes it’s sad to see that a seemingly intelligent person can actually advocate creationism and be pro-life, be a Nixon apologist and think that science is nonsense and advocate things that are only hurting the environment even more in defense of what can only be described as greed and ignorance.
May 29th, 2008 at 10:25 am
Honestly…what do you know. I would trust Ben Steins wisdom before yours.
May 30th, 2008 at 2:55 pm
We should drill off shore for now. We most likely won’t get any other was to fuel America until the oil runs out. Maybe that whole peak oil ting is really about to happen and all the folks who make their money from oil are trying to get as much as they can before it runs out. I find it hard to believe there is no secret contingency plan in the waiting.
May 31st, 2008 at 6:46 am
So, in other words if he’s not a liberal then he’s no good. I agree that we need to find other sources than oil but what does that have to do with being pro life.
Do you have something against people who are against the killing of babies? Oh right, it’s the woman’s right to kill the baby if she wants to.
May 31st, 2008 at 6:24 pm
The last thing oil producers need are more subsidies - can our agricultural producers receive more considering the need for mass produce and higher taxes but lower profits? I am reconsidering domestic drilling - just not so irresponsibly that we deplete our environment and the natural balance of things as “conservatives” are apt to promote. And gasoline conversion is a messy, albeit seemingly essential task.
I love how liberals are trying to ruin the world by protecting freedoms such as religion and speech while conservatives love to enact “social prohibition laws” based on how “morally reprehensible” they find individual actions. Furthermore, those “crazy liberals” vote for CONSERVING NATURE in a world where dumping toxic substances and destroying the natural ecosystems are promoted for sake of “economic growth and expansion”. Yet liberals are evil and trying to restrict everything????
June 3rd, 2008 at 10:27 am
Gee, wont it be great to freeze in the dark while wondering where our next meal is coming from. I say “The greenies can experience this first” seeing as this is what they are going to cause.
June 3rd, 2008 at 6:57 pm
I love how most of the people commenting (original poster included) can’t argue the points, only present an opinion with little proof that their opinion sits on solid footing scientifically, economically, logically, and REALISTICALLY.
Yes, it’ll be great when the entire world can be powered by solar energy and sugar cane. The problem is that NOW IS NOT THAT TIME. In all the discussions about our energy issues and “alternative sources of energy” I find it exceedingly interesting that the presenters never seem to inject the cold, hard, brutal smack in the face of REALITY into the discussion!
Everyone who thinks that we should NOT drill for oil, NOT build refineries, NOT build nuclear power plants…those people are all either (A) ignorant of reality or (B) just plain stupid. Why do I say that? Because the economy WE LIVE IN NOW is an ECONOMY BUILT ON FOSSIL FUELS. No “magic bullet” will solve our energy needs. Solar is making nice progress, but it will take quite a bit more time and effort before it can reach a tipping point where it’s cost-effective enough for the average person to use for some or all of their energy needs. Ethanol, while a neat idea, is not a suitable long-term high-yield energy source for the US: we don’t have the infrastructure to produce it massively enough, and it does one hell of a nasty job on metal fuel lines, absorbing water like a sponge and then holding it there to rust them out, and as an additive to normal gas it decreases the per-gallon fuel economy of the gasoline–the list of issues with it is tiresome to repeat in full. I could go on for things like wind power, geothermal, and more, but you get the general point.
Reality is that we NEED oil, and we can’t and won’t switch to a different energy source fast enough to alleviate that need.
The answer lies in the same philosophies used by investors: DIVERSIFICATION. Much like how you’d not be wise to invest 100% of your money in large-cap blue-chips, so you’d be a fool to look exclusively to fossil fuels OR exclusively to “alternative energy sources” for your future energy needs. We need new energy sources that do not rely on fossil fuels, yes! But, we cannot live in a pipe dream (my problem with the majority of so-called “liberal” philosophies is that they are too optimistic to be implemented in our imperfect reality). Oil is reality, and it will still be a major source of energy over the next decade, sort of like how Microsoft is so entrenched in the economy that no one else is going to root them out of the majority share of the software market anytime soon.
I’m all for alternative energy, and one of my goals is to buy a huge chunk of land (on Craigslist) and plop down a home that exists “off the grid” on that nice big piece of dirt. The problem is that, while I’d love to do such a thing, it doesn’t free me from the fact that my car, the power plants feeding Craigslist’s servers, wastewater processing plants…all kinds of things are still going to be running on fossil fuels for a significant amount of time, and it’s not a matter of whether or not you CAN accept that, because you have no choice in the matter.
Quit talking trash about all the ways we should be getting more oil from the ground and flaunting your pipe dreams of alternative energy we’ll be able to use a week from today. You sound like a college kid, thinking you have all the solutions to the world’s problems, but you conveniently ignored the drawbacks to your solutions and left that jagged little pill called “reality” out of the equation. Realize that you can research alternative sources of energy all day and all night for years, but you’ll still be putting gas in your car’s fuel tank a year from today, and a decade from now you may very well WISH that we had begun drilling in ANWAR this year, because oil isn’t going ANYWHERE, ANYTIME SOON.
June 5th, 2008 at 2:35 am
Screw you pro-life freaks…you don’t know what it’s like to have to make that decision of not being able to afford a mouth to feed and yet having to live the rest of your life with that weight on your shoulders. Shame on you.
June 5th, 2008 at 8:18 am
Yeah, let’s just let other countries drill for oil off of our coastlines and then SELL it back to us! Makes much more sense doesn’t it?
BTW — I absolutely agree with “Wordpress sucks” — couldn’t have said it better myself.
June 5th, 2008 at 10:02 pm
What the heck people? Respond to the issue addressed, who cares about ben stein’s abortion stance, not the point of the above statement. The point is why would we increase subsidies for companies making $15 billion in profit every quarter? Subsidies are for struggling industries that find it hard to turn a profit but we need their services a la farming. The point is we do need to start focussing more on alternative sources, that’s what should be subsidized.
June 5th, 2008 at 10:30 pm
When Reagan took office in 1981, he took the solar panels that Carter had installed on the Whitehouse down. Stop labeling other Americans and start working on solutions you idiots!
June 5th, 2008 at 10:41 pm
i’m an engineer. what’s wrong with offshore drilling and subsidies? we need a way to keep our economy from crashing and driving inflation up while we churn out alternative fuels and transportation methods - i personally am for bringing back the interurban; also, it leads to independence from the world market and opec, we don’t currently have a powerful industry and we are not self-sustained, we need to bring back the value of our dollar in this sense and enhance sustainability and independence. also, what is wrong with subsidies? it means our gas is cheaper. yes, it’s higher govt spending, but they’d prefer that consumption continues being strong than spending less on this. a tax on the company is a tax on the consumer, because all they do is just raise their prices, not take a hit on their profits (taxes actually hit their profits because less people will buy gas). subsidies means the price of gas will actually go down and keep our economy stable. we need sometihng to live on and continue working and eating while we have new technology which won’t come out for a few years, maybe a decade you know.
June 5th, 2008 at 10:44 pm
“Yeah, let’s just let other countries drill for oil off of our coastlines and then SELL it back to us! Makes much more sense doesn’t it?”
NosyNeighbor, you do realize that oil is traded on the commodities market, yes? Do you know what that means?
June 5th, 2008 at 10:57 pm
Who reads the NT Times anymore? On the rare ocasion I mistakenly get a dose of loony left-wing indoctrination from CNN, MSNBC, Reuters, NY Times, etc., I do something really painful to bring sanity back into my life: call my ex.
June 5th, 2008 at 11:02 pm
I think we should not drill any new pits. It will be hard but we need to take some definite steps. As many mentioned above, changing north-american style of living will greatly decrease the demand for oil. The industries will be much harder to change, as their were built during cheap oil era. But, personal steps are much easier to take and government should reward those who take them.
There is no magic bullet, the solar and others alternatives, at their present form, cannot fully replace coal and nuclear, but they can be our only source of energy. Not now, but for children and their grand-children it MUST be the case.
We are unlucky to be born during such transitional period but we have no choice as, all the fossil fuel WILL end, whether we want it or not. We need to change.
June 5th, 2008 at 11:05 pm
Sign me up for getting a local nuclear power plant. If its designed right we should be able to tour the facility too. Hopefully it will lower my monthly power bill so I can freely run a few more computers.
June 5th, 2008 at 11:57 pm
“Intelligent design gives us … wisdom”
I always ask myself, do people like you really exist? Apparently…
June 6th, 2008 at 1:08 am
Again, as Jon said, can you expand on why you think he is an idiot?
Please, no simple slurs about people who accept intelligent design being batsh*t crazy’. I wonder how many people who use those slurs have actually EVER read the arguments, often made by very intelligent, well-informed scientists, for intelligent design…in my experience of discussions with such people, the number is precisely zero…
June 6th, 2008 at 1:58 am
It’s sad that you suggest a more conservative, capitalistic policy, and a number of the first posters attack you as a “liberal.”
June 8th, 2008 at 11:22 am
The need for oil is inevitable. If an alternative fuel conversion is available for your car tomorrow, would you pay the thousands to convert it, or would you just pay the $4+ per gallon for gas, now? Just like the documentary, Whatever Happened to the Electric Car? Are there plans in the future? I guess for now, we just need to change our driving habits and watch our spending to make up for the rising cost of fuel.
June 8th, 2008 at 12:53 pm
Unfortunately you are going to fall over, leaning that far to the left! His policies make absolutely perfect sense. It’s the liberal, so called ‘green’ thinkers that have gotten us into this mess in the first place!
Cuba is drilling 50 miles off of our coast but our government bleeding hearts will not allow us to drill in our own waters in the same area. Oh yea, Cuba’s technology is probably safer than ours.
And even the people and Governor of Alaska are suing the Federal government to drill.
Wake up and smell the oil! Liberals and only liberals are forcing us to rely on foreign energy sources!
Long live the Ben Steins of the world!
June 10th, 2008 at 7:51 pm
Ben Stein has made a living doing voice overs for commericials and cartoon characters..he is famous for his distinct voice.
June 13th, 2008 at 2:26 pm
Oil Is finite, coal is finite, stupidity is infinate. The energy companies have been buying energy saving patents for years. Check the US patent office and you will be surprized as to what has been developed and patented and is NOT on the market. This is no coinsidence. Do you know our energy policy? Dick Cheny (Haliburton) and buddy Ken Lay from Enron were in on the formularion of our US energy policy, and do you know that the minutes from those “confrences were NEVER made public, even though Democrats went to tne supreme court to try to get them. Funny isn’t it. Now we are about to elect a Black man as president because the white administration has left us with such a screwed up mess we will vote for ANYONE but them. Isn’t it a shame. I love my country but I do believe we have seen the start of the downfall, when the mercantile exchange ( oil futures) can create a situation that ruins millions of people and steals untold public wealth because of RUMORS of things they have no knowledge of. Our problem is apathy, greed, and stupidity. We are better than this, Open your eyes and do something. Demand…. Our collages be funded in order to fully think out and implement our next energy source, demand it to be individulized instead of centerilized. Demand… our medical system implement state of the art systems to ALL not just the richest of us. DEMAND… responsibility of our elected officials and if they don’t deliver HOLD THEM ACCOUNTABLE.
Above all wait till W gets out of office and turn him over to the world Court for war crimes. If this doesn’t happen we will be domed.
June 13th, 2008 at 2:35 pm
OUR PROBLEM WITH GLOBAL WARMING IS FOSSIL FUEL BURNING.
Why would we want to poullute our selves even worse with more use. We need non poulluting sources(solar, wind, tidal waterwheels, geothermal, Hydrothermal, so many types to gather our attention and still you want oil.
We must get off oil now. We may find a much better use for it later.
June 14th, 2008 at 1:48 pm
I’m interested in how “ray4a” brings out the oil company “purchase and suppress” conspiracy theory, saying “JUST LOOK AT THE PATENTS!” and yet does not provide any kind of link or number of patents for us to examine. Apparently “ray4a” has not actually LOOKED AT THE PATENTS, and is only regurgitating the conspiracy theory he accepted without doing any of his own research. Nice.
By the way, “ray4a,” you preach about how “we must get off oil NOW” and yet I’m willing to bet that if electric cars the size of a Geo Metro that could travel 200 miles on one charge came out tomorrow at the low low price of $20,000 MSRP, you’d still be driving around in your gas-sucking vehicle. You clearly didn’t read my initial post: ENERGY SOURCE DIVERSIFICATION IS THE KEY. We REQUIRE OIL *NOW* because that is what our economy is built on, and change never happens overnight (that’s why such an electric car would be so expensive, because the mass-production wouldn’t be there until the market grows enough for the product).
The answer is: DRILL AND PRODUCE MORE OF OUR OWN OIL NOW, but while that oil production is going on, ALSO DEVELOP NON-FOSSIL FUEL ENERGY SOURCES AT THE SAME TIME.
The key here is the part about still needing to get oil.
By the way, are you enjoying your electric bicycle? Oh, wait, that’s right, you don’t have one! Hmm, wonder why? Enjoy being an uneducated armchair Senator.
June 14th, 2008 at 6:26 pm
This might be the saddest thing I’ve seen in a long time. People beating each other over the head with ill-used grammar and emotionally-driven arguments….ON A CLASSIFIED WEBSITE BLOG!
June 15th, 2008 at 10:10 am
“IHateBen Says: Screw you pro-life freaks…you don’t know what it’s like to have to make that decision of not being able to afford a mouth to feed and yet having to live the rest of your life with that weight on your shoulders. Shame on you”.
Wildman says: Hate?? Freaks?? Nice. Aren’t you are a real, true humanitarian? Let me guess, you identify yourself as a liberal, right? You are so open minded that you are OK with labeling those with whom you disagree as “freaks”. I’m certain if I labeled a member of one of your “communities” as freaks, you would merrily lead the charge to excoriate me. Hypocrite.
Maybe you just don’t know what it’s like to say “no” to yourself, and not just spread your legs (or her legs) to produce a “mouth that you can’t afford to feed and have to live with for the rest of your life”. Maybe you’re simply too self-indulgent to accept responsibility for something greater than your own pathetic self??? The “weight on my shoulders” of my two children has been the best thing in the world to me, through good and bad times, for over 25 years.
It’s actually a good thing that you are likely to abort any child you are faced with, because frankly you are way too bitter, angry, and disparaging to be a decent parent. You probably aren’t even a remotely decent human. The world is better off without your loveless genes contaminating the pool.
ray4a
“…stupidity is infinate…” You can’t even spell, and you want to be taken seriously? Yes, I do know our energy policy. I work within its framework every day, trying to make it work for my company in a constantly changing world market. Chaney and Lay were “in on the formulation” of our energy policy??? Duh….you think?? That’s because with decades of professional experience in the industry, they are what’s known as experts.
What’s your alternative solution? “The People”? Grassroots? “Sustainable” macrobiotic tofu magnetic crystal pyramid healing compost farms? Personally, I’d rather have someone who is an actual energy subject-matter expert formulate our policies, than some half-baked, conspiracy-spouting, BDS sufferer that can barely form a complete sentence. But if you think you can actually help solve the problem Senator, jump in anytime……
You’re wrong anyway. Our energy policy was (and is) formulated by people from both sides of the US political spectrum, as well as governmental employees from DOE, NRC, EPA, academia, and a host of others who actually know what they are doing. Of course, since they have to actually go out in the field and do the work, even the evil old “Energy Industry” (Engineers, Scientists, Technicians, Project Managers, etc.) gets involved. If you have a problem with that, stop whining, get off of your lazy ass and be part of the solution.
Although, given the rest of your whiny little rant, I suspect you are too uneducated, uninformed, and too illiterate, as well as being way too much of a radical leftist (as revealed by the next topic, and your “Bush” = war crimes lunacy) to contribute more than background interference.
“…steals untold public wealth because of RUMORS of things they have no knowledge of…”???
Public Wealth??? No such thing. Is that Proto-Marxist doublespeak? If that’s your construct, the public actually benefits from higher gas prices, because as the prices for gasoline increase, so to do the tax revenues per gallon (they’re based on percentages, not fixed dollar amounts). Since taxes on fuels account for an highly significant portion of the cost at the pump (when you factor in local, state, federal direct taxes on the fuel itself, as well as the tax burden on the entire acquisition/production/transportation/distribution infrastructure), maybe you should talk to the tax and spend liberals in Congress whose only answer is to stifle one the few remaining industries that have managed to survive in spite of overtaxation.
“…we will be domed[sic]”. Buy a dictionary. And please, stick to subjects you know something about, like tie-dye, or cannabis cultivation, and let the adults handle the “grown folks business”.
June 17th, 2008 at 9:38 am
Wildman,
You have a very narrow framework of worldview. If you think that Dick Cheney and Kenneth Lay are “experts” you are correct. They are expert thieves. Have you read any Karl Marx? Have you visited any ‘grassroots’ farms, communities or sustainability projects?
You seem to think that to be liberal is to be weak. You clearly have a very limited understanding of history and innovation. Ideas never come from the fascists you dummy.
There’s no such thing as public wealth? Do you know nothing of the history or economic realities of your own country? Nothing?
I mean, you do realize that most industry is heavily subsidized by your tax dollars right?
Your corporations are the biggest welfare client America has. Funny that you think an industry that generates hundreds of billions of dollars a year in profits is “overtaxed”.
I think if you were to take the true ethos of “taking care of yourself” to heart, you’d find yourself like the first pilgrims on these shores…..starving, begging the aboriginals for help, and fleeing back to england.
You haven’t got a clue about the reality of politics. There is no left and right wing. They’re just actors. They all stand for more or less the same thing.
Countries that control their oil have far greater revenues and standards of living. See Norway as an example. They control their oil resources and have state ownership as a key component of any licensing agreements. Do you think that it’s a coincidence that they have the highest standard of living in the world?
Notice that it’s not even part of your conversation in America? And what little is controlled by the government is sold off to various logging and mining interests at prices that actually COST the U.S. taxpayer money to do.
That’s called control, and that’s what Dick Cheney and Ken Lay are experts at. You americans have been rooked by your media consortiums, the endless propaganda and you stand around and blame each other for it. Unbelievable. But it is believeable, because that’s what the media wants you to focus on: this supposed left/right argument as to how to do things. It’s nonsense. The rich and powerful with the control want you to fight these battles instead of focusing on the real issues, such as : the richest 1% on this planet control 80% of its wealth. They do this by taking resources, often by force. It’s why the media hates Chavez, Morales, Castro, and grassroots activists like Chico Mendes. Ever heard of Chico Mendes? A simple peasant organizer in South America, killed because he opposed logging corporations. This happens everywhere. You need look no further than the conquest of America. Pillage for resources. Same old story Wildman. Ever read it?
Don’t believe the lies, rhetoric, and nonsense of the mainstream media.
This paragraph of yours makes you sound very ignorant:
What’s your alternative solution? “The People”? Grassroots? “Sustainable” macrobiotic tofu magnetic crystal pyramid healing compost farms? Personally, I’d rather have someone who is an actual energy subject-matter expert formulate our policies, than some half-baked, conspiracy-spouting, BDS sufferer that can barely form a complete sentence. But if you think you can actually help solve the problem Senator, jump in anytime……
Do some field based research before you start shooting off your mouth. Your marginalization of other viewpoints through stereotyping is pathetic. At least have some substance to your nonsense. Clearly your theoretical economics degree has little weight in reality.
If you open your view of the world, you might just change your mind about the alternatives…..because many of them are real and viable, which is why you’ll never hear about it through your media, controlled as they are by the same people who control the energy sector. Oh, and to the person who said CNN is a left wing station………you really don’t understand how deeply embued the propoganda is in your country.
Peace out.
June 17th, 2008 at 12:07 pm
I always ask the Pro-Life folks how many kids they’ve adopted. That always shuts them up quick and then gets them stuttering that “it doesn’t matter…”
Yeah, if you want to force others to have kids they can’t and/or won’t take care of…. yeah, you’d better be willing to step up to the plate and do your share to adopt these unwanted kids. Anything else is hypocritical.
June 22nd, 2008 at 10:59 am
Douglas:
Yeah that always shuts em up!!!
So, you’re saying that if I think it’s wrong for a government to with-hold food from it’s people, leading directly to kids starving to death, I must adopt them… or I’m a hypocrite?
If I think it’s wrong for a kid to be traded as a sex slave, yet only sit here wishing it were not so, but don’t actually do anything about it myself… I’m a hypocrite?
If I think it’s wrong that some kids get their lunch money stolen by a bully, yet don’t give them my own money… I’m a hypocrite?
How about if I call for those RESPONSIBLE for the situation, to STOP DOING whatever it is that is harming/killing the kids?
You are misusing the word hypocrite.
June 26th, 2008 at 7:15 am
What a loser lib. Wake up and smell the roses. How do you think you get the food in your specialty organic freak stores. It takes lots of fuel, and how do we get fuel? You live in candy land! There is a big bad world out there that does not care about your little childish attempt to get the world to all hold hands and live in eutopia. If fuel prices do not improve either we will all have to take out another mortgage to eat or start farming.
June 27th, 2008 at 11:09 pm
Wordpresssucks’ long-winded rant against “Everyone who thinks that we should NOT drill for oil, NOT build refineries, NOT build nuclear power plants…” only proved is that he’s smarter than a straw man. Sadly, he’s apparently not much smarter, because he also thinks that ANWR could provide more than a blip in our oil supplies. The simple fact that he couldn’t even get the acronym straight (referring to it as “ANWAR”) provides a clue as to whether or not he knows what he’s talking about.
Yep, Wordpresssucks is just another trash-talking, fact-scrambling conservative…
June 27th, 2008 at 11:15 pm
Yet another fact-bending conservative, Wildman, calls another poster a hypocrite–not for something they actually did or said, but for what he THINKS they MIGHT do in a given situation.
What an asshat.
July 2nd, 2008 at 5:00 pm
So it might take 10 years or less to be able to use oil being drilled right now - in that amount of time alternate forms of energy could be investigated and they wouldn’t be ready by tomorrow either. In 10 years we would at least be competative with the rest of the world and not have to relie on buying oil from other countries. Why is it ok for other countries to drill off our coast and not us? That certainly doesn’t protect the environment. I realize wind power and solar energy are excellent sources for helping, but you sure can’t hook up your car to them - today or in 10 years.
July 7th, 2008 at 3:07 pm
Drill in Anwar, Drill off-shore, Just drill!!! Ten tears ago we were hearing it would take ten years! Time’s up! It seems the liberals and special interest groups want us to have all the oil and never use it. They would rather send all our money overseas to be used against us, by buying foreign oil. I say put the oil money in our own economy and pockets. STOP financing tjhe people who would do us harm! We got it — let’s use it!
July 7th, 2008 at 3:15 pm
If you vote for someone against using our natural resources, I hope you enjoy WALKING to work. As Americans, we need to vote for the people who care about us and not about where their next donation is coming from. Wise up people. Spending a couple hundred million dollars for a half million dollar job doesn’t make sense. The big money comes from the people that buy the politicians. They want thier Lbrary, we want to be able to eat AND drive to work.
July 23rd, 2008 at 11:57 am
Actually, since no one else has said it, technology advances are made every day, and drilling for oil now doesn’t mean it will be 10 years, it could mean 7, or even just 5 years. But we won’t know that if we don’t try. I agree with everyone that it will take time, so will alternative energy, but seriously, look back to president carter, he was making the same speech our current candidates are making. If we would have kept increasing our drilling back then, we wouldn’t be arguing about it now. With that being said, let’s learn from our mistakes, not repeat them in the next generation. No one can produce anything quicker than 5-10 years, so I am for doing it all at the same time and totally against the bickering and we will see in 10 years or less which is better, or all is better. Don’t forget everyone, everything that is plastic needs oil too, not just your cars either, every plastic bag, etc. Car interiors, home products, etc.
August 25th, 2008 at 4:33 pm
Yet another fact-bending conservative, Wildman, calls another poster a hypocrite–not for something they actually did or said, but for what he THINKS they MIGHT do in a given situation.
What an asshat