A Few Shiny Pebbles

I go now every day to bighollywood.breitbart.com because it is always worth the time, and even has some of the most interesting comments on the Internet. Today there is a piece by Evan Sayet that is mandatory reading, and a video of a speech he just gave at the Heritage Foundation that is worth its weight in gold. Go to BigHollywood here, to Sayet’s essay at BigHollywood here, and to the fabulous video here.

Yes, the video is 62 minutes long. WATCH IT ANYWAY!!!

You’ll be exhilarated! You’ll cheer! You’ll laugh! You’ll take notes! You’ll search for a transcript (if it becomes available)! It’s W O N D E R F U L !

Watch as Sayet brilliantly proves that the modern Liberal invariably must choose:

Evil over Good. Wrong over Right. Behaviors that lead to Failure over those that lead to Success.

Then, in the afterglow of this brilliant speech, you can go to the one he gave two years ago. I thought then, and I think now, that Evan Sayet is a national treasure—an American treasure. A couple of years ago I watched his Heritage Foundation speech and I thought so highly of it that I spent a lot of frustrating time trying to find the transcript (and found it! Yay!).

Go listen to it here.

Go read the transcript here.

(Maybe even go read a blog post in which I mentioned some of it here.)

Tell everyone you know. Tell people you don’t know.

Get the word out!

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At another presidential beginning, on January 20, 1961, John F. Kennedy’s Inaugural Address included these two sentences (emphasis mine):

[...] the same revolutionary beliefs for which our forebears fought are still at issue around the globe—the belief that the rights of man come not from the generosity of the state, but from the hand of God. [...] And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country.

It’s amazing to me that these basic ideas should be matters of great debate at this very moment, almost 50 years later. And it should be pointed out that, since Kennedy slashed tax rates for the highest earners, his idea of “what you can do for your country” did not include paying high tax rates. He cut the tax rates. Even for the highest earners.

So what does it mean to ask what you can do for your country?

You improve your country most by using your money to start companies, to invest in companies, to hire employees, to buy a product or pay for a service so that others can earn an income. You raise decent children and join clubs and donate time and money to charities you admire. You honor heroes and join the military or the “first responder” groups or you teach someone to read, or to play a sport, or you care for the sick or open a shelter or volunteer at one. You help your neighbors and keep a friendly eye on the safety of your neighborhood. You take pride in doing your job or making your product. You make friends and laugh and sing and walk in the park and leave out birdfeeders.

You improve your country most by taking your “piece” of America and turning it into a garden.

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I’m back. Things have stabilized around me to the point where I can think about more than just the immediate future. I’ve been looking down at my feet, uncertain about the next footstep, picking my way through the tangled jungle of my “right here and now”, but it’s time I looked up and took stock of the longer view.

We are always immigrating from the past into the future, along the daily pathways we’ve learned to follow through experience. But if you’ve looked around lately you may have noticed that we have wandered off the familiar map and into a seeming wilderness. Our normal mental GPS system has no clear advice to give us here.

There are all sorts of experts of one form or another who are telling us that they have plotted out the topography around us and indicated possible routes that can lead us onto the pathway to a successful future, but how do we know which ones are right? One thing we know for certain is that some of the experts are lying, and some are just plain wrong.

So we can’t just go about our daily life and trust to someone else to describe the territory, choose the path, and lead us on our way. Not this time. This time we’re at the edge of a minefield.

We have to be very, very careful. We have to take the time and exert enough effort to ascertain just where we are and where we want to go, before we take more than just the next few short steps.

Remember that we’re searching for a very great treasure—for what is worth more than a glowing, generous-hearted future? Just as in the legends of old, we must search for the sections of the treasure map that when put together will give us a good idea of the territory we have wondered into, and the treasured pathway that will lead us out of here.

And just as in the greatest of the legends, it’s a matter of life and death. The century we have just survived has given more than enough evidence of the terrible price to be paid if some people follow the wrong path to their future and in so doing drag a lot of victims into an earthly hell. In the territory of the Real, the deadly wilderness is always just a few steps away in the future.

Right now, looking at our future is like looking at a field of rough-grown brush, tall tangled weeds and wild, overgrown thickets. We thought of this, our inheritance, as an arable farmland, but when we look at it we realize that we haven’t done the work to keep it in good order.

I’m reminded of a story I read in elementary school, about a bird that nests in cornfields. Two adult birds were watching their young and one says that maybe they should take their families and leave because she heard the farmer say he’d ask his neighbors for help and bring in the corn crop. The other bird, wiser in the ways of the world, says not to worry. Days later, when nothing has happened, the first bird says she heard the farmer say he’d call his relatives in and bring in his corn crop. Again, the other bird says don’t worry. Finally, the first bird says that the farmer said he was going to bring in the crop himself. The wiser bird calls in her young and announces to everyone that now they have to leave, that the corn would be cut at last.

Like the farmer, we have to start the work of clearing the land ourselves. We have to use our brains and what we can read and hear and write to clear our thoughts, to clarify what it is we need to do to reclaim our land.

America is worth it.

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In the previous four parts of this discussion, ONE, TWO, THREE, FOUR, I have presented arguments to support the fact that there needs to be an immediate, over-arching plan for us to start producing as much American oil as we can, as soon as we can, by opening up ANWR, the Rocky Mountain Oil Shale, and the outer continental shelf regions of the Atlantic, Pacific, and Gulf to drilling, and putting them on a fast-track through the rules and regulations involved with that drilling.

Right now, we are standing at a fork in the Road of History, wondering which path to take. The path that we finally choose to follow will open out into a broad new future, but it’s hard to make out the features of each pathway when we are besieged from all directions with advice, promises and warnings. We think we're involved in a presidential election, but it is far, far more than that. Once again we stand on a great battlefield of a war, and this time it is a conflict that will test America as it has never been tested before. America was conceived in Liberty, and it is the Freedom of the Individual that is being put on trial. One of the greatest fights we face is simply to recognize this war for what it is: the profound battle of the Individual against Collectivist Ideologies.

We need to remember that our enemies have many kinds of “armies”. Some fight by terrorist acts both on the official battlefields such as those of Iraq and Afghanistan, and in what we consider purely civilian theaters of operation throughout the world, such as London subways, Madrid trains, and American buildings. Some fight through courts and coercive social pressures. Some make rules and regulations that eliminate the personal and make everything political, that make every aspect of our lives subject to legal and administrative fiat based on the Collective Ideology.

While our military and security people are engaging the terrorists, it is up to the rest of us to fight those mental guerrillas of all kinds who take over territory in our minds and emotions by sowing fear and lies, by coercion and bribery and threats. They try to tell us that we must withdraw from many of our choices, that we must become less than what we are by birthright as Americans. They tell us that we have to drastically change our behavior so that we can become citizens of their correct Utopian Vision. They want to make each of us a member of a Collective, a member indistinguishable from all others of our category, our “identity”, our “kind”. We must become their “authentic” citizen.

To the Left, the Collective is the Nanny State they long for. They place us in categories measured by ethnic, race, gender, and other such markers. Any individuality we show must be suppressed by laws such as hate crimes, hate speech, and other rules and regulations that add up over the years (such as on which foods we may eat, and which are forbidden).

To the Islamists the Collective is an Islamic Caliphate, where the Collective is under Sharia law and rigidly controlled. The Collective’s categories are religions, their religion against all others, the suppression of individuality is ruthlessly carried out, and by law females are totally controlled in every aspect of their being.

Both the Left and the Islamists place heavy value on events and issues that tend to herd Individuals into Collectives, and the Energy Crisis serves each of them in their own way.

This is why we must fight those who use the armies that march unseen with economic power to destroy us. Right now, some of our enemies control vast wealth from oil profits. They are in a position to do great damage to the world by destabilizing countries that depend upon their oil, and by exploiting that destabilization. They will have the money to rebuild whatever they destroy, so they will not have to take as much care as they would if they had to keep their victim’s infrastructure intact. They are in a position to cause localized depressions, with massive unemployment, by strategically handling the oil they normally provide, controlling its flow even to the point of cutting it off in places, and collecting vast sums of money from its users.

They can back terrorist groups such as Al-Qaida, the Taliban, the FARC in Peru and Colombia, the groups of Basque and other terrorists who are truly all over the world. By creating the conditions for the industrialized countries to go into recessions, they can bring added pressure on the Third World who cannot receive the kind of aid they normally do when their usual benefactors are in recessions.

With huge petro-dollar profits, through advocate propaganda, and/or by sowing fear—our enemies can coerce, bribe and/or buy what they need for both strategic and tactical purposes. They can obtain communications systems—the press, the airwaves. They can buy key industries and assets, set up safe houses, bribe those who show a willingness to sell out their own countries in exchange for power and money. They can buy politicians and policy makers, military officers, pay for assassinations, and otherwise extend their power in ways that are not obvious or easily discovered. They can set up training camps and organizations, they can outfit them with supplies and experts. They can pay or coerce experts to join their side or to be silent.

We have, in the past, ignored those who tell us of such plans. We have stood horrified to find that such words were, in truth, written in blood. This time we must listen. This time, we must hear the Future calling to us.

Henri Amiel said that, “Truth is not only violated by falsehood; it may be outraged by silence.” It is our duty to speak out, to call attention to what we see happening around us, especially when too much of the press is heavily biased and won’t tell the truth when it interferes with their ideology. We need to raise our voices in protest when the attempt is made to silence experts who disagree with the current Collectives and their accepted “Truthiness”.

To those who say that too much of what we do is a case of “Blood for Oil,” we must respond that we are not fighting for oil, we are fighting for what oil is now and will continue to be for decades in an industrialized world that drinks oil to live as much as we humans drink water. We must have in our hearts the courage to carry with pride, with honor, and with strength the duties that will seek us out. And we must honor those who stand directly in the face of danger.

As a part of all this, the Collective Agendas march along with the Challenge given to us by Al Gore on July 17th, as I will discuss in Part Six.

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Obama is giving a speech. Just a moment ago he said, talking about the Berlin Air Lift, that at that time retreat would have allowed Communism to march across Europe.

Mr. Obama, please read the speech you are giving when you finish so you can think about what you said. Why can't you see that in Iraq, retreat would allow Radical Islam to march across Iraq, and be a threat to Saudi Arabia and, in truth, the rest of the world.

History offers us warnings. Freedom is in danger as we speak. Let's be as brave and far-sighted as we were 60 years ago, as we were in the effort you have just praised so highly.

In my first post on this blog, I wrote:

Weapons of Mass Destruction look out at the world through hate-filled eyes, waiting their chance. Removing a Saddam Hussein removes a vast source of such chances, furthering our cause in giant strides. The future demands no less of us than this, that we take such risks for such gains, and that we count ourselves blessed that there are brave hearts and spirits willing to shoulder our dreadful burden.

Yes, Mr. Obama, we are involved in a World War, we are trying to "answer our destiny", to "remake the world" once again. In another post, I wrote,

They must be stopped, over longer time frames than we have ever had to maintain a conflict, by methods that are agonizingly difficult, by people who fight courageously for us and must be supported in every possible way. If they are not stopped, then the Terrorists will engulf first the oil-rich Middle East and then, slowly, inexorably, the rest of the Muslim world, and finally the Western world itself, extinguishing the human rights and freedoms we unconsciously rely on. Our birthright will be taken from us by a power that we allowed to grow and grow and grow into an unconquerable monster.

A victory in Iraq is crucial to our country's effort to keep assets from terrorist hands, and to send Freedom on the march it must take to fulfill our destiny.

Read your speech, Mr. Obama, and try to understand what it is you said.

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In Part Three, I concluded that the United States will continue to require copious amounts of petroleum, and will for decades to come. And so will the rest of the world. For decades to come.

THE SOLUTION

What do we do? As I showed, even if we follow many transition efforts (such as T. Boone Pickens’s Plan) we, and the rest of the world, will still need millions of barrels of oil per day for decades. Pickens points out that we are sending $700-billion a year out of our country to pay for the oil we need. (About $168-billion of that—about 24%—is for petroleum we use every year for non-transportation, everyday products we manufacture in the US.) This has to stop!

For all these reasons, I support an immediate, over-arching plan for we Americans to start producing as much oil as we can, as soon as we can, by opening up ANWR, the Rocky Mountain Shale, and the outer continental shelf regions of the Atlantic, Pacific, and Gulf to drilling, and putting them on a fast-track through the rules and regulations involved with that drilling.

We need to produce petroleum within the United States so that we can bring down the price of it for ourselves, so we can control the flow of oil by becoming the petroleum source for certain other nations or areas of the world when necessary. We need to keep our military supplied for operations all over the world, and we need to be able to fight the war against the terrorists that now can be found all over the world. We need to be able to do this without worrying about where the petroleum will come from for ourselves and our allies, and even for those who are on the fence at times, and we need to be able to respond quickly in world emergencies.

This will also keep our money in the US, for all we can do with it here. Moreover, it will keep billions of dollars away from our enemies. Another strong argument is that there are countries throughout the world who are paying for petroleum from countries whose leaders are channeling hundred of billions of those dollars into terrorism, insurgencies, and outright war against the interests of the United States. We need to re-channel as much as possible of that money to our own income. This would bring us even more billions each year.

How can we do this? You have probably read and heard the Main Stream Media repeating the idea that the United States has only threepercent of the world’s reserves of oil. But now we know this is not true! We have all the oil we’ll need right here. We can produce all the petroleum we need by ourselves, and we can sell petroleum to others any time we decide it is in our best national interests to do so. Look at the startling, crucial Chart that shows the “Potential US Oil Shale Energy v. Foreign Oil Reserves” in just the Rocky Mountain sites. As John Hinderaker, at Powerline, points out:

Rocky Mountain shale is believed to contain the equivalent of 2 trillion barrels of oil. Is that a lot? The entire world has used around 1 trillion barrels since oil was discovered in Pennsylvania in 1859.

We can supply our military, and, if need be, the militaries of our allies in NATO and throughout the world who are fighting in our national interests. It is in our vital interest to drill NOW and to keep drilling HERE at home. Forget the mediocre or empty 68-millions acres the Democrats want to foist off on us. We need to drill in the BIG THREE US AREAS: the Oil Shale Rocky Mountains, ANWR, and the outer continental shelf. We cannot allow ourselves to be dependent on anyone outside of the USA for petroleum any longer than necessary.

There are also billions of dollars to the US government in royalties, oil leases, taxes, and so on, that will come from such drilling.

We need as quickly as possible to be able to help ourselves, our allies, and others to withstand, any blockades of the Strait of Hormuz or sabotage in other oil routes. It is not just the United States that would be harmed in that sabotage. The world is interconnected economically in ways that will devastate all of us if the flow of oil is cut off in any significant way. We also must have more than just our “Strategic Petroleum Reserve”, (which is only enough for the US itself for about a month).

We have a long history in our country with using our resources to benefit our friends around the world, and this is another policy we can add to Lend-Lease, the Marshall Plan, and the Berlin Airlift in our history books. With the oil we could produce, we could drive down the price drastically and still have a healthy profit.

In Part Five, I will discuss some of the enemies of this potentially successful drilling.

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In Part One, I pointed out that, despite all the talk about making the US energy independent, we cannot separa. te ourselves from the vast world infrastructure of energy needs and economic interdependence.

In Part Two, I pointed out that there are vast infrastructures for the generation and distribution of electricity. Also, that the non-petroleum power capabilities that people are talking about now—solar, wind, nuclear, along with hydro-systems like dams and geothermal energy—are only means to generate electricity. (Petroleum products, natural gas, and especially coal are also used in copious amounts to generate electricity.)

THE PROBLEM

The world uses over 80-million barrels of oil every day. (Of that total, the US uses over 20-million barrels a day.) By 2030, it may rise to over 140-million barrels per day for the world, and we will have our share of that need. India and China (and others) will be using a much higher percentage than they do now because of increased vehicle use.

Right now, the US uses about 24% of its daily over 20-million barrels of oil for non-transportation and non-electricity needs. These are products people use all the time, day in and day out. One of the interesting lists I found of some of these is:

Ammonia, Anesthetics, Antihistamines, Artificial limbs, Artificial Turf, Antiseptics, Aspirin, Auto Parts, Awnings, Balloons, Ballpoint pens, Bandages, Beach Umbrellas, Boats, Cameras, Candles, Car Battery Cases, Carpets, Caulking, Combs, Cortisones, Cosmetics, Crayons, Credit Cards, Curtains, Deodorants, Detergents, Dice, Disposable Diapers, Dolls, Dyes, Eye Glasses, Electrical Wiring Insulation, Faucet Washers, Fishing Rods, Fishing Line, Fishing Lures, Food Preservatives, Food Packaging, Garden Hose, Glue, Hair Coloring, Hair Curlers, Hand Lotion, Hearing Aids, Heart Valves, Ink, Insect Repellant, Insecticides, Linoleum, Lip Stick, Milk Jugs, Nail Polish, Oil Filters, Panty Hose, Perfume, Petroleum Jelly, Rubber Cement, Rubbing Alcohol, Shampoo, Shaving Cream, Shoes, Toothpaste, Trash Bags, Upholstery, Vitamin Capsules, Water Pipes, Yarn.

Many of the products listed will continue to require petroleum to make them, comprising several million barrels of oil a day we will need into far the future regardless of what else we do.

So far as transportation is concerned, changing automobiles into electric plug-in cars is one thing; changing trucks, freight trucks, heavy duty vehicles and equipment, trains, ships, emergency vehicles, military vehicles, and so forth into electric-powered vehicles is a whole different thing. And aircraft of all kinds is even more problematic.

In just the US, we have about 240-millon cars and light trucks. If we retooled our car factories, and the only cars we manufactured in the future were electric or hybrids, it would take almost two decades to come up with replacements just for what we have now. And that would be if people could afford them, and we had the electric grid infrastructure we would need to “plug-in” when we needed to. It would require extremely rapid development of electric generating plants with wind and nuclear power. But look at the timetables from those who plan to develop more electric generation, who plan to develop the grid that will be necessary. They plan on years of work before this could be finished. (Look at T. Boone Pickens’ timetables at his site.)

The US would still need petroleum products for cars for a couple of decades! Even if we work miracles in time and effort.

And what would we do about the current investment we have in the cars we own? We can’t just dump them by the side of the road and step away. Most people who own cars and light trucks are still paying for them. If they change to electric or hybrids, what do they do with the vehicle they already have? It is the norm for people to sell their current vehicle when they buy another. To move all of us into electric cars, we will have to junk our other cars, losing the asset we have in them. Where will we put 240-million of them? This will be a tremendous problem.

And that is just for autos and light trucks. What about electricity for large vehicles, including trains and ships? The extremely powerful fuel cell batteries that exist today cost tens of thousands of dollars. Large vehicles that are called electric, right now, actually use a fossil fuel (mostly diesel) to generate the electricity on the vehicle. Aircraft use jet fuel, a petroleum product, now and into the future. Changes from this will take more than decades for these vehicles.

Moreover, emergency generators, emergency vehicles and heavy equipment, will continue to require large amounts of petroleum products. Earthquakes, floods, hurricanes, tornados, major blackouts, and other emergencies—problems that will require petroleum products will continue throughout the world during any transition to alternative fuels, and we will not be able to “plug-in” in most of the world. We will need vehicles that can use local petroleum products, or the petroleum we will bring in to the areas of emergency. Petroleum is a potent energy source, and will be required especially where large vehicles, and/or long distances are involved.

We will also need petroleum fuels for international commerce requiring a source to refuel aircraft, heavy freight, trains, and ships and boats that come to our shores, across our borders, and into our airports from other countries.

All of this is just for the United States, at the stage it is now in population and capabilities. Two or three decades for us, and even then we will continue to require petroleum products for manufacturing, for emergency generators, and also for aircraft, and for vehicles we must maintain for operating outside our country in the military and emergencies.

If we envision now the need for these changes throughout the world, and their demand for electricity, and what it will take to build the electric generating stations, putting the improved distribution grid across vast distances, developing the technicians, and all for the world that uses the above-mentioned minimum of 80-million barrels of oil a day. (And this need will increase rapidly as populations and possibilities grow.) How would the fuel usage of this amount of petroleum translate into the daily demand for electricity? France and Japan obtain about 80% of their electricity from nuclear reactors. The rest of the world will need to build thousands of nuclear reactors to supply the electricity needed, would have to build and sell to people who are able to afford the electric cars, and would have to establish an improved electric grid throughout some of the poorest areas of the world.

There is no way around the fact that implementing all this will take years, and tremendous amounts of money. And even then, most people in the world could not afford the cars. There will have to be millions and millions and millions manufactured. All of this will take a great deal of time, money and materials. And then people will have to pay for charging their batteries along with their other electric utility charges. There are 6-billion people in the world, and the world is on the move. This future will make demands on the world that can only be solved by petroleum products for decades while the changes that will allow a better future are in motion.

For the above reasons, the United States and the rest of the world will continue to require copious amounts of petroleum for decades to come.

So what can we do about it? We don’t want to keep importing most of most of the petroleum we’ll need. In Part Four: Drill HERE, Drill NOW we’ll find our solution.

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In “Energy: Why We Need to Drill No Matter What: Part One”, I pointed out that in making decisions about the oil-drilling question and the energy crisis in general, we need to have a certain background of information as a start. Part of that background is that there is a extraordinarily vast world infrastructure for petroleum and its products, and the world uses over 80-million barrels of oil a day. This amount is increasing rapidly.

Now, the second of the background issues is electricity. Just as with petroleum, there are extraordinarily vast infrastructures for the generation and transportation of electricity. The following is part of what you should know to make educated decisions about energy policy.

The non-petroleum power capabilities that people are talking about now—solar, wind, nuclear, along with hydro-systems like dams and geothermal energy—are only means to generate electricity. Petroleum products, natural gas, and especially coal are also used in copious amounts to generate electricity. And you can’t store electricity except in extremely small amounts by using it to charge-up short-term batteries. Vehicle batteries that act to propel the vehicle, as opposed to lighting its headlights or running its radio, not only have to be recharged after a given distance traveled by the vehicle, but these batteries also cost, at this moment, thousands of dollars. (Surprise!)

Once generated, electricity has to travel by wire from its point of generation to its point of application, usually traveling across a distance, sometimes hundreds of miles, to where it will be used by people who plug into that delivered electricity.

These wires from a power station to the home or business have to travel through the air or underground, between powerline structures (like between those tall metal towers that march across the land, or like telephone posts). Not only does the generated electricity attenuate as it travels, but that weakening must be strengthened by the functioning of other equipment, such as transformers, at given distances along it travel.

In order to use electricity to power vehicles, the electricity will have to come through a wire capable of transmittion to a heavy-duty power outlet next to the car to be charged. This means that everywhere you use, or want to use, electric cars, the physical area has to be properly wired, and there has to be electric wiring to every location where an outlet is needed. (Or you can use a gas or coal powered generator to produce the electricity, but that introduces gas and coal back into the equation.) All this is a problem here in the United States, because millions of people live where their cars are parked in unwired lots at night. This is even more of a problem in China, India, Africa, South America, Central America, and so on, where there are vast unwired distances that must be traveled by vehicles, and thus where there are no power outlets for charging or recharging batteries.

What about “charging stations” in cities with parking lots, and along the roadways, the way there are gas stations now? How big will they have to be to accommodate many, many times more cars for a few hours each? There is another complication because there is a significant difference in time-frames needed to fill a car engine with gas—a few moments—and an electric car with a charge—a few hours.

If we want to use electricity to power vehicles, we will have to vastly increase the number of electricity generating plants (including nuclear) and have vast numbers of new powerline wires and transformers over countless miles to application outlets. (For instance, look at T. Boone Pickens’ plans for wind farms, and how he’ll send the electricity generated in the middle of the country through wires to the rest of the country, including the coasts, at www.pickensplan.com).

As food for thought, imagine the more than 240-million cars and light trucks at this moment in the United States alone. Imagine the number of vehicles we’ll add to that with increasing population. How much more electricity will have to be generated to allow a couple hundred million cars to charge up overnight, even if it is just a portion of those cars at any one time? Try to imagine this increased, and ever more increasing, demand for electricity, added to our current production of electric power. (And, this does not include the millions of freight trucks, trains, aircraft, boats and ships here, that would still need non-electrical power.)

And that’s just the U.S. alone.

But all this merely touches the surface of the situation. This is just background knowledge. In Part Three, I want to start discussing some of the serious implications of Part One and Part Two with respect to our desire both for non-polluting energy usage and to be free from the need for petroleum. (And why we won’t—can’t—succeed in those desires. We will still need to drill petroleum in vast amounts. For decades to come.)

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The difficult part of an argument is not to defend one’s opinion but rather to know it. --- Andre Maurois

Some of the most important—and imperative—issues in our lives involve energy production and usage, and for the first time in a long time in this country we have finally reached a point where the public is demanding action: begin drilling! This means that we are going to make decisions about energy that will set us on the beginning of one set of possible pathways into the future. We had better get it right. We must make our own views clear in order to make the best choices we can.

We are being told that conflicting information, for instance that, “We have to wean ourselves off oil”, that, “We need to become energy independent”, “We can’t drill our way out of this crisis”, “The oil companies have 68-million acres right now that they are not drilling on”, “We can’t do anything quickly to bring down the price of gas”, “It will take 10 years to get any gasoline from drilling”, and at the same time we are told that, “We need to open up the areas off the coast, in ANWAR, and in the mountain shale oil regions for drilling, with new methods which will take far less time than they used to.” We are told, “We need to follow environmental rules for stopping the Global Warming crisis” and also that, “Global Warming is not a crisis.”

Uh-Huh.

I have read a lot about these issues, and I have made up my mind that we have to drill in as many areas as possible, offshore, ANWAR, oil shale, everywhere, as long as, at the same time, developing other sources of fuel. I mean to post a series of essays on my blog over the next weeks, giving my reasons for that decision.

Where do I start? I can see several issues that absolutely must be addressed before we can make our decisions, but it’s hard to tell which should be considered first. I think I’ll work from the Macro to the Micro—the big picture first, and then the details.

A lot of the articles I’ve read add greatly to the knowledge-base from which I’ve made my decision, but I think, to begin, the things I’ve read miss some of what I think are the most important grounds for my decisions on oil drilling and energy policies. I think that this is because there is so much talk of what America needs now, what America will need for the short- and long-term future, about what will or won’t bring down the price of our gasoline, our need for energy independence, and such things—but the crucial background, over-arching issues, are almost completely missing from all this talk.

This current concentration on America and its local interests comes about from the fact that we are in the middle of a presidential election campaign, but we had better stop and think more clearly, and step back from the candidates and political parties to think in larger terms. Once we have really looked at certain crucial issues, and made some crucial decisions, we can always return to our political squabbles and fight over which party is going to grab onto which arguments. However, the main work leading to our decisions must be carried out apart from partisan emotionalism.

So, first, we can’t look at the just United States right now. We have to look at the world itself. And I don’t mean as a “globalist”, or a member of the United Nations, or in terms of which countries we should have diplomatic relationships and/or meetings with and which not—no, we need to be far more fundamental than that. And I’m not talking here about the Global Warming issue, which needs a discussion of its own. Here, for this discussion, we have to look at the world as a place where the USA is part of a gigantic economic infrastructure composed of friends, enemies, and a lot of countries that lean one way or another depending on momentary alignments and enmities, all dependent mostly on oil and electricity. This is not the “Let’s join hands and sing” kind of relationship; rather, it is hard reality. We cannot separate ourselves from the world infrastructure.

Every day of the year, very single country in the world must seek to create and obtain, one way or another, as near as possible to the total amount of oil and electricity it needs to survive, and, if possible, to do as best they can to grow economically beyond that. Whatever energy policies we come up with as Americans had better take into consideration, as fundamental and irrevocable, our present and future relationships with those other countries with which we share this world. No country can isolate itself any longer. All the talk about American energy independence is problematic in a world where everything and everybody is connected economically, where imports and exports are vital components of economic existence and growth, where major powers need strong militaries operating across the world, and where there are large international responses when emergencies happen.

We have to recognize that the world uses over 80-million barrels of oil every day for the petroleum part of its energy requirements. Think about this for a moment. That’s a vast amount of oil. With the economic growth of countries such as China and India, (and eventually the Third World regions of Africa, Asia, South and Central America, etc.), the demand for energy, for more and more barrels-a-day, will grow larger and larger with each passing day. They say that the US is 5% of the world’s people and 25% of the world’s petroleum usage, but that doesn’t mean that as the percent of our oil usage drops it will be because of our lessening our demand for oil; rather, it will mean that the rest of the world will start catching up with us in usage, and it means that the need for oil will rapidly grow far beyond that 80-million barrels a day. It is not a zero-sum game.

Just imagine for a moment the physical and human infrastructure now in operation necessary for those 80-million barrels of oil per day: supplying, producing, maintaining, and manning oil wells, delivery of product to shipping point, shipping all over the world as freight in heavy trucks and ships, pipelines and other ways, in refining the petroleum into constituent products for supplying manufacturing of products and for using as energy, in transporting those refined constituents, in using them in manufacture and in selling them to the public. Think of how much of the world’s employment and energy use goes with just getting the petroleum to market to refining and to the end-user for use in manufacturing and transportation. Think of how much money is changing hands, and to whom those hands belong.

This is just the first part of the background that must be taken into consideration.

There is also a huge infrastructure involved with electricity, the other major power source in this background discussion. If you're wondering where solar panels, geothermal, wind, coal, hydroelectric, nuclear, etc. are not the issue in this background overview, it is because all these energy technologies are used to generate electricity. So electricity is the next part of my search for answers.

Trackposted to The Virtuous Republic, Perri Nelson's Website, third world county, Faultline USA, DragonLady's World, Right Truth, The World According to Carl, Shadowscope, DragonLady's World, , The Pink Flamingo, , Democrat=Socialist, Dumb Ox Daily News, and Right Voices, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

In regards to the recent behavior of Hillary Clinton, we have to remember that a candidate is not officially nominated by a political party until the convention officially votes him or her in by a ballot taken at the site. Even if the “won” delegates were locked in to their candidate on the first ballot in the August convention, please notice that because of Hillary’s continued efforts, Obama will not carry enough locked delegates into the convention to win on the first ballot without special delegates, who will not be locked in and could decide to deny him their vote. Because she fought to the end of the primary, the nomination will be up in the air until at the very least after the first ballot.

Senator Clinton is aiming at the nomination this time or, at worst, in 2012. And no matter what he does, Senator Obama will not be certain of the nomination until the deciding vote is officially counted and accepted at the convention, and that depends on what comes out in the next almost three months. (Hillary might just have some blockbuster under wraps.) The super delegates already have a lot to think about.

Hillary has just said that she would be open to consideration as Obama’s vice president, if it will help the Party. I think that she probably doesn’t actually want it, but she wants to cause him problems, and her answer today has stirred things up. The situation is fraught with dangers for both of them, and this is my assessment:

If she did become the VP candidate, and Obama won:

First, as VP she would have little power, and Obama would be able to make her look meaningless by what he makes her do.

Second, as VP she and her husband would lose their position of power, and Obama, with Soros and others behind him, would be the power figure.

Third, as VP she would not be in a position to run in 2012. Either Obama would be successful, and be the candidate himself, or he would have a disastrous presidency, and she would be tainted, and it would also make the winner in 2012 more probably the Republican candidate.

Fourth, can you imagine the caustic relationship there will be between Obama’s staff and Hillary’s? Not to mention with the members of the Cabinet? And an ex-President running around with all Bill Clinton’s baggage and escapades? And the fact that no one could shut him up?

The situation, both ways, if Obama lost would be:

First, if she is the VP candidate, she might be blamed for the loss, and that wouldn’t be good for her immediate future, or for 2012. This is a major issue for her.

Second, if she is not the VP candidate, she can claim that she would have won. This would give her a power base for 2012, and continuing power in the opposition, against a Republican president. She would be an important figure once again, and it would give an added spice to her revenge against those who have turned on her now.

Third, her offer will allow her to say that she did everything she could to help him win, and at the same time people will blame him even more for any loss.

All this being said, if she does work hard to force herself into the VP nomination during the next few months, It could mean that she has finally decided that the two of them would win, and that once he’s won she can produce a huge hidden super-ugly-problem that will force him out of office, thus making her President. Given the problems already indicated on his side, such a Big Ugly could exist. She would have to determine if she could keep it hidden until after the election. If there is such a Big Ugly, and she thinks that even together they would lose or that she can’t hide it that long, she won’t try to be the VP candidate, and she will use it against him—optimally in October, if it can last that long—to make sure he loses and to clear her way for 2012. Either way, she will make sure it looks like the Republicans have released the information.

If she actually accepts the VP nomination from him, clear the decks. She will try to grab as much power as possible, and it will mean that she thinks there are possibilities worth pursuing. If Obama somehow gets elected, the public will find that he is far more Left than anything they imagined, and the public can move in large numbers when it is really, really upset to make its voice heard.

No matter what happens, Hurricane Hillary is forming as we speak. When and if she makes landfall, who knows what will happen?

Any way you look at it, this will be interesting to watch.

Trackposted to Pet's Garden Blog, The American Nationalist News Service, Outside the Beltway, The Pink Flamingo, The Amboy Times, Faultline USA, , and The World According to Carl, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.