OK, right off the bat, pretty much all of us realize that oil is NOT a permanent solution to powering our transportation. Due to the length of the process it takes to make oil combined with our current rate of consumption, if something doesn't change we WILL at some point in the future run out of oil. Whether you think that will happen in ten years or in 500 years is irrelevant to the argument. On our current path, at some point we will run out.

Most of us also realize that even if the miracle car that ran on water or perpetual motion were invented TODAY, it would take YEARS to get a significant number of them on the roads.

Finding a replacement for oil is important and we should be pursuing it more than we are. It is not easy and due to the law of unintended consequences we need to be sure we get it right. The point being we need to do it and it WILL take time!!!!

However, what do we do in the short term?

Even a CHILD should realize that it is not a good idea for a nation to be dependent on the good will of its ENEMIES for it's energy needs. Buying oil from people who want to kill us is not a good idea!!! It gives them LEVERAGE and MONEY to buy the weapons with which they'd kill us!!!

Even a child should realize that CONSERVATION ALONE won't do the trick. Even if we did conserve like crazy (and we should), China, by itself, would offset our reduced demand and prices will still go up. Conservation ALONE is NOT the answer.

So even though we are sitting on extremely LARGE oil reserves we don't drill for our own oil and we don't conserve. Instead we pay billions to our ENEMIES, drive gas hogs and complain about the price of gas.

The folly of this approach was illustrated just last month when the Bush administration begged the Saudis to up production. We won't increase our production. Instead we beg our enemies to increase their's.

IT IS TIME WE AS A NATION ACTUALLY HAD A COHERENT ENERGY POLICY!!!!

One part of that policy would be a "Manhattan Project" style search for new energy. If 50 years ago, in under ten years, we could put a man on the moon, we ought to be able to figure out something other than oil to put in our fuel tanks.

The other part of that policy would be to AGGRESSIVELY drill for our own oil in the short term. It is a national disgrace that no oil refineries have been built in this country in over thirty years.

We have the oil.
We have the technology to safely get that oil in a way that does not harm the environment. Our oil companies are the most technologically advanced and CLEANEST in the world!!!
And we certainly have the need!!!

So, for example, does it make sense that the CLEANEST oil companies in the world can't drill off the coast of Florida but a country using 1950's technology (Cuba) can????? How does it "help" the environment to have the "Flintstones" drilling for oil off our coasts while the companies that ARE actually SAFE can't?

I'm no fan of Big Oil but the reason for high gas prices is not in Exxon's board room. The reason for high gas prices is the United States CONGRESS, specifically DEMOCRATS who are beholden to the dirt people.

It's time Congress got the hell out of the way and became part of the solution instead of being the main reason for the problem!!!!